


all in the fight for a future bright

by LightDescending



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies), Terminator (Movies), Terminator: Dark Fate
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Drift Compatibility, F/F, Gen, Jaegers (Pacific Rim), Movie: Terminator: Dark Fate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:47:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23516434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightDescending/pseuds/LightDescending
Summary: It is 2025, and the Wall of Life project has failed. Dani Ramos is called back to pilot her recommissioned Jaeger at the behest of Sarah Connor, a tragic ex-pilot who's grudgingly returned for the Jaeger project's last stand... but first, Dani needs a new Drift partner.Grace Harper, a quiet new recruit, initially seems the best candidate. But she's got something to hide, and her secret could change the course of the Kaiju war forever...Or: a Pacific Rim AU for Terminator: Dark Fate
Relationships: Grace Harper/Dani Ramos, Sarah Connor & Dani Ramos, Sarah Connor & Grace Harper
Comments: 114
Kudos: 130





	1. Prologue - 2020

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justanexercise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanexercise/gifts), [starfoozle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starfoozle/gifts).



**Los Angeles, California - 2020**

Dani has never been inside a LOCCENT control room until today.

It makes her head spin – Claire, their guide, keeps outlining what they’re looking at, discussing the specs, but Dani has tuned out long ago, even though she can feel Diego nodding along next to her.

In front of her is a Jaeger’s face. Seeing it alone is enough for Dani to summon the mental image of what the full chassis would look like in all her glory. Made up of countless engines attached to innumerable muscle strands, this Jaeger – Cyclone Valkyrie – might even contain parts that Dani and Diego machined. They’re too far away to examine how anything was stamped out, or put together, but the American flag emblazoned next to other decals on the Jaeger’s face suggests as much; she would have been assembled locally in the Americas.

At the best of times, the Los Angeles Shatterdome can be described as chaotic. They’d heard as much, seen footage, but nothing could fully prepare them for the battering rush of sound, colour, and movement on entering the facility. Vaulted ceilings carried shouts from personnel and mechanical noises from transports throughout the main bay; in the side hallways, the suddenly close quarters cramped everyone together, forcing Dani, Diego, and Claire to weave and amble around in the hopes of getting to an elevator. Dani had started to notice patterns in the space – pedestrians, supply lines, soldiers, engineers, all of them had different styles of movement. The industriousness of it all was brash and unavoidable, and Claire commented as much. She’d told them on the way up here not to feel badly if it was overwhelming – some initiates to the Shatterdome lifestyle never got used to the level of activity, and they were joining up during a particularly tense period. 

Retreating to the control room is the first real respite Dani has had all day, and even then there’s a flurry around her – keyboards ticking away, distant reverberations carried up from far below them, an occasional hum of servers or whirring as a hologram is activated. Around them, the scientists continue on with their work.

Dani, she’s biding her time. And in some ways, the ambience and purposeful tumult is… enlivening. She’s used to it, from growing up in Mexico City and working for years on a manufacturing line – for cars, that first year after completing her studies in _bachillerato,_ and then Jaeger parts once all the plants were commissioned for such work.

On top of that, she’s waited _two years_ for this day to finally come, with weeks of training and simulations leading up to their initiation here, today. Not even the fact that their mentor is late in arriving can dampen the nervy excitement she feels.

“She was the first Jaeger deployed from America, no?” Diego is asking. Claire consults the technical pad in front of her for some notes. Diego leans in close, placing his head right next to Claire’s as though in raptured interest; Dani rolls her eyes at him, and he winks.

“Yes, actually, although she was significantly upgraded in the aftermath of… her unlucky third mission, back in 2014. Cyclone Valkyrie used to be a Mark One, but we consider her a Mark Two, what with the upgrades – some split the difference and call her a one-point-five. She’s tough either way. Her pilot should be here any minute now…”

The doors open behind them, with a pneumatic hiss, and all three swivel in their place expectantly.

Claire’s face falls a degree, but she pulls herself together. “Ah. Well, not who we were expecting, but this will help with the orientation all the same… hello, doctors!”

She clicks across the floor, in front of Dani and Diego; they share a glance. Dani’s is more one of disappointment, but she arches an eyebrow when Diego wiggles his.

Sharply elbowing him in the ribs, Dani hisses in Spanish, “You can check her out _later_ – we need to make a good first impression!”

“I _am_ making a good first impression,” he replies in a low voice, widening his eyes in mock upset. “How am I supposed to practice my English if you accuse me of flirting every time I speak? I’m hurt.”

They both straighten with a jerk as Claire turns back towards them with a welcoming gesture. “Come along – you should meet the heads of research, although they won’t let me be properly formal…”

“I am Carl,” the first man says, in a baritone and heavily-accented voice whose origin Dani can’t immediately place. “It is a pleasure to meet you both, especially given your reputations.”

“I have one of those?” Diego jokes with a wink, taking Carl’s offered hand.

“Yes. And they are rather impressive.”

“Daniela – but I go by Dani, and this is my brother—”

“Diego, right?” Comes a softer drawl, from the other man in front of them. He stands, sleek, with dark eyes that remind Dani of a hawk’s, and his hands held behind his back in attentiveness. “Pleasure’s all mine. Carl and I are the head scientists here – you’re not the only one with a nickname, miss. Gabe’ll do just fine.”

“Each Shatterdome has its own Kaiju Science Division,” Claire explains. “Ours is known for being quite… experimental.”

“She flatters us,” Gabe chuckles. “Other Shatterdome teams are researching the Breach, or Kaiju biology. Our goal is to enhance the Drift process itself, make the neural handshake stronger, more robust. Prevent the kinds of… mishaps that our own star Pilot teams have encountered in the past. The risks tend to be exaggerated.”

“But we _do_ have the safety of our pilots first in mind,” Carl cuts in. “Data suggests that the Kaiju are becoming stronger. If they are adapting to our fighting styles and techniques, then predictive modelling is our greatest asset in preventing loss of life, civilian or otherwise. I focus my energies on such methods. Gabriel, on the other hand...” 

“No matter what my colleague’s tone implies, I _am_ making remarkable progress, and with the full support of upper command,” Gabe smiles thinly. “Even if some elements of the home team are resistant.”

Dani exchanges a glance with Diego again – there’s a strange tension in the room, building up from the friction between these two. She has the sense that this conversation is more the continuation of an argument, this time for an audience, rather than a proper introduction. Claire clears her throat.

“At any rate, we’re glad you both happened to be upstairs – saves me a trip with the Ramos’s later.”

“Ah, yes. We did come up here for a separate purpose. I regret that I had entirely forgotten about the orientation today.”

“Carl here feels the need to _supervise_ me when I patch the software,” Gabe continues. “Ah well, peers will be peers. And I reckon he thinks he can learn some new tricks by watching. Please excuse me.”

At that, Gabe smoothly peels away to cross to a set of computer banks on the other side of the room; Carl frowns minutely after him, before shaking Diego and Dani’s hands. Dani can barely see past Carl’s hulking form, but watches as Gabe seats himself at a keyboard, taking the place of another scientist and starting to type. A set of hologram screens bloom to life in front of him, before Dani’s attention is grabbed back by Carl’s apology.

“You will forgive us both. I have projected another event to occur. A Kaiju attack is expected any day now, and we are all on edge – the Connors may be late because of a briefing related to—”

“Let the devil be spoken of,” comes a new voice, rasping and acerbic. “Are these the newbies?”

“Ah. Sarah Connor.”

Dani feels it, a lurch in her stomach of nerves and excitement comingled, even before she and Diego spin on their heels to face the door once more. In unison, they snap to attention, as they have every time they meet a war hero: it gives Dani a good look at the faces of the people closing the scant gap between them. She barely hears Carl excuse himself to Claire and slip away.

Sarah Connor is older than Dani expected – in her 50’s, maybe her 60’s – with a silver sweep of hair pulled back in a ponytail. Despite that, she has the top of her jumpsuit peeled back and the sleeves tied low-slung across her waist, showing off a white tank top, no bra, and an enviable pair of well-muscled arms; Dani has to avert her gaze so she doesn’t start blushing. The man walking next to her is… possibly Diego’s age, maybe a little bit older, with a strong jaw, easy swagger, and his mother’s eyes.

“Yes,” Claire exclaims, clearly relieved. “Dani and Diego Ramos from Mexico, pilots of the—”

“The Phoenix Echo.” Dani finishes. “We’ve heard so much about you.”

“It’s an honour,” Diego adds.

Sarah has as strong of a grip as Dani expected; the man beside her, too.

“Then you’ve heard of my son, John.”

He nods, rolling the toothpick in his mouth around before speaking. “Welcome to L.A. – don’t let it eat you alive.”

Before that strange greeting has time to sink in, Sarah claps her hands. “So! You’ve been recruited for the defensive line, right? I hear you’ll be shadowing us.”

“Yes! Just until the Phoenix is fully calibrated and outfitted, and we pass the remainder of our sims.” Diego grins. 

“Those aren’t as useful as the real thing,” John remarks quietly. “And you don’t necessarily want to be there on the front lines.”

“Even so,” Dani says, reaching a hand up to rest on Diego’s shoulder. “We look forward to contributing however we can. We know that our lack of experience makes us less viable candidates for combative roles, but we have a serviceable record all the same, and we’re fast learners. Our drift levels and neural handshake stability have so far been excellent, and we were able to pilot our Phoenix on patrols through the Baja California region on our way here. All without incident, but useful for getting acquainted with the way she moves. The last seven years have been hard on all of us. Everyone is essential, yes?”

Sarah pauses, giving Dani a harder look up and down. It makes her feel as though she’s under an x-ray.

“Yeah,” Sarah says quietly. “We’re on the same page there.”

“I’ve got copies of their evaluations here if you need them,” Claire opens, bringing up the files on her touchpad, but Sarah shakes her head.

“Send them to me later; I know enough about these two. Sent Houndstooth our way from Puerto Vallarta, didn’t you? Fight was a bitch. Easier since you’d cracked some teeth for us in advance.”

Dani smiles ruefully, remembering the destruction, the oily smoke all around them in the assembly bay, when the Phoenix Echo was nothing more than a disembodied cockpit attached to in-progress weapons systems…

“We were just lucky,” she starts, but then there’s a presence over her shoulder; one that prickles the hair along her neck.

“Or fated,” Carl’s voice says from above and behind her, and Dani swears she sees Sarah bristle.

“So you’ve met the machines too?” Sarah quips in Dani’s direction, without a trace of humour.

“I have news to share, before this orientation demands your full attention.” Carl says, not reacting in the slightest. _Does everyone in this station hate each other?_ Dani thinks, taking Diego’s hand and squeezing it momentarily. “It is supplemental to the briefing I gave this morning regarding the anticipated frequencies of Kaiju attacks.”

Sarah pinches the bridge of her nose. “And you couldn’t tell me earlier because..?”

“We were still waiting for conclusive results.”

Gabe rejoins them at this point, Dani sees, stepping out of Carl’s shadow so seamlessly that it almost appears he is an extension of the other man’s body. “Which I have now, and took the liberty of patching into your Jaeger. She’ll have access in her databases, and the intel can be factored in when the AI prompts you for suggested manoeuvres.”

“How many times do we have to tell you not to make patches to Valkyrie without our say-so?” Sarah snaps.

Gabe raises his hands in capitulation, though he looks anything but sorry. 

“I authorized the changes.” Carl interjects, and Dani sees John place a hand on Sarah’s shoulder, barely; she remains tense, but closes her mouth. “They were considered relevant to all future battles and too consequential not to code in immediately. Gabriel has reason to believe that the Kaiju are capable of inter-entity knowledge transfer, without technological assistance or sub- or super-audible vocalization. I am able to verify his findings.”

“Can you rephrase it for the class?” John snaps. “I’ve got a master’s degree and I can’t make sense of that.”

“Gladly,” and Carl _still_ seems unflappable. “The Kaiju appear to share something like a hive-mind.”

Typing at the computers directly adjacent to them stops, and Dani notices that everyone in earshot is gaping.

Sarah speaks up, low and dangerous.

“And you know this, how? Exactly?”

An alarm blares to life.

The lighting in the bay changes from an even cool tone to vivid crimson, coating the room in an instant, and everyone startles – Dani included. Sarah and John exchange a look, a grimace.

“Kaiju alert!” Calls one of the technicians from her desk, and it’s like a switch has flipped – the static-shock irritation between the researchers and this base’s star pilots dissipated, people scattering to various stations or tuning in their comms gear.

“Qué esta pasando–?” Diego yells to Dani, but it’s Sarah who answers him before she has a chance.

“Hell of a first day for you both; this is the real thing.” She tells them in Spanish, before switching back to English and yelling over the din. “Carl! Get me the readings, what category are we dealing with?”

Carl’s impossibly tall form leans across a dashboard of switches and rapidly blinking lights to skim across a scrolling set of codes appended to a diagram.

“Category 2!” he shouts back. “Codename: Chimera. Inbound, landing time expected in just over 142 minutes.”

Sarah and John peel away, but not before John taps Claire on the shoulder.

“Get the rookies to follow us for suit-up,” he says, and then the pair of them are gone.

Claire, who by now looks _thoroughly_ overwhelmed, seems to be blinking back the more extreme elements of her reaction. “Oh. Shit. Yes, um, you should – follow me.”

She starts to take off, but Diego catches the cuff of her sleeve as she passes him. She looks back, over her shoulder, and he flashes Claire a winning smile, the same one he posts to Instagram for the fans of his hobbyist musical career. Unbelievable.

“Hey,” he says, “I wanted to thank you for the amazing tour. You’ve done so well, and I can see how much of this must be a challenge – when this is over, would you let me show my gratitude? Get a coffee?”

Claire blushes as red as the room around them.

\--

“Did you really have to get that final remark in?”

Dani flips another set of switches above, the microphone in her Drivesuit transmitting her voice to Diego on their private band almost as clearly as their handshake will in moments.

“What?”

“To Claire. Don’t you feel like you–”

“Took advantage? Not in the slightest!”

“Priorities, Diego. That’s all I’m saying.”

“It got me a date, didn’t it?”

“Assuming we get through this okay.” Dani shrugs, rolls her shoulders – in these suits, it always feels like she can’t breathe properly.

“Hey.” Diego reaches across the distance, wobbling slightly where his feet are already magnetized in place. “We’re going to be just fine. Valkyrie, they say she’s a pro at this! The Connors are legends!”

“You know as well as I do that we can’t take any of these battles for granted,” Dani says. “Remember what happened to Sarah’s first Drift partner?”

“Of course,” and for once, to Dani’s relief, Diego sobers.

As though talking about her was a summons, Sarah’s voice crackles into their headsets. “ _Checking in! What’s your status?_ ”

“About to synch!” Dani responds.

“ _Copy._ ”

Gabe’s smooth, slightly Texan drawl reaches them, then: “ _ready to go, Phoenix?_ ”

“As we’ll ever be.” 

“ _Más valen dos cabezas que una_ ,” he responds, and a cool female voice streams through the cockpit.

_Initiating neural handshake._

* * *

She’ll never get used to this – the smearing, dream-like quality of falling into the Drift. Dani closes her eyes and the memories are there, crisp in the areas of focus and soft, hazier in the backgrounds, and she’s swept up into the irresistible rush of them.

_Loteria at the kitchen table after dinner, running with Diego/with Dani through the streets and dodging around cyclists delivering mail, eating mango sprinkled with chili as he hollers that she’s added too much and she laughs high and bright as a bird’s call –_

So much from their childhood is shared, and so the Drift creates a strange duplicity: the same event, recalled in slightly different ways, like a holographic card where, as you tilt it in the light, an illusion of many dimensions is created.

 _–_ _and their mother clapping her hands in the kitchen, the funeral no we’re going to skip that one, leaving a milagro at the shrine so their Papi will be healthy, Diego picking up a guitar twice his size and singing loudly with the goats outside in their neighbours house bleating along to the incoherency of his song –_

Where there are moments of divergence, Dani is grateful in other ways. Diego sees the world so differently from her. For him there are endless opportunities, laughter; he has the eye and soul of a romantic, and all the extremes that come along with that.

_– a first kiss that did absolutely nothing for her, both of them realizing that they were staring at the same gorgeous woman at the market and he teased her about it for weeks, Dani graduating top of her class, Diego landing his first job in the machining shop, the lime-rind bitterness of an argument over relative accomplishments: “maybe you would have gotten the promotion if you took anything seriously!” –_

For Dani, there has been responsibility, worry, efforts at maturity with an undercurrent of mischief that gets to find expression every now and then…

_– Diego slinging a carefree arm over Dani’s shoulders as though she’s the one being looked after, Dani ruffling his hair, a hug between the two of them, the smouldering ruin of half the factory around them as she jams a helmet onto her head and reaches out so he can take her hand –_

_Established and holding._

She opens her eyes again and she is looking at him looking at her, and around them the body of a giant they can control.

“Come on, sis,” Diego think-speaks around his crooked, boyish grin. “Let’s pretend this is an adventure.”

* * *

“ _Your orders are to hold steady here, at the forty kilometre mark out from shore,”_ Carl tells them. “ _Cyclone Valkyrie is already at her posting further out, ready for the intercept. Unless something goes wrong, your direct involvement will not be required.”_

Across the vast ocean in front of them, and much further ahead, Dani can see the hulking silhouette of the Valkyrie with her position well taken up. It’s hard to resist the urge to squint, despite the UV shielding in Phoenix’s faceplate – the sun is bright, the sky a searing, cloudless turquoise. It would be a perfect day to be at the beach, were it not for the klaxon that continues behind them in the city. On their way out here, Dani saw abandoned towels, crumpled umbrellas; in a few hours, opportunists will come and scour for valuables that would have been ditched as soon as the Kaiju alert sounded. Every citizen should be home if they’re far enough inland, or in a bunker if they’re lucky enough to live with one close by. Still – it was an eerie sight, and Dani still hasn’t fully shaken the mental image.

“Roger. What are the chances that something goes wrong?”

A pause, before: “ _Approximately 12.8%.”_

“Did he do that in his head?” Diego mutters to Dani, muting himself temporarily to avoid being overheard.

“ _I think your calculation doesn’t give us enough credit,_ ” they hear John say. “ _Doesn’t matter if it’s been months since our last rumble, we’ve got this. Holding ready – got eyes on that Kaiju, LOCCENT?”_

“ _Chimera approaching – keep an eye on your six.”_

Within moments, they hear a loud whoop from Sarah: “ _Come on, you fucker! Mommy’s got a surprise for you!_ ”

Cams from the faceplate of the Valkyrie pick up details. Chimera is a brute – an array of slick, waving sensors framing its face like a lion’s mane, with terrifying jaws and several rows of teeth. They watch as it rears out of the water with six arms clawing towards the Valkyrie in a furious sweep. A tail arcs behind it, some sort of pincer on the end clamping at the air reflexively.

“ _Must weigh two tons,_ ” they hear Gabe say.

“Is it just me or does he sound excited?” Dani can’t rip her eyes away from what’s being broadcast to them, first-person perspective; Valkyrie dodges a sweeping claw, moving with shocking agility through the ocean that reaches up to her chest. They hear a thin high whine as the plasma cannon in her right arm charges, a model that looks like a rocket launcher.

“Relax, Dani.” On the screen in front of them, Diego’s watching other readouts – he runs his fingers over a few of the keys, switching some of the readouts to a metric that they can understand more easily. “Researchers get weird, right?”

Sarah and John’s shot punches into the torso of the Kaiju. It hisses, screeches; is flung instantly back, folding into itself with a sudden gush of Kaiju blue entering the churning waves. As Dani watches, the end of the tail glances off of Valkyrie’s shoulder, grips around her torso.

Like she’s at the end of a cracking whip, the Valkyrie gets flung off balance. She stumbles, disappears, and Dani takes an unconscious step forward.

“Whoa!” Diego corrects for the sudden change in their stance from his hemisphere, shoots Dani a wide-eyed look. Water sloshes around Phoenix’s knees, and Dani imagines she can feel it, the slight bit of resistance. “Hey, hey-hey! We’re supposed to hold! We can’t go out to meet it, Phoenix is not reinforced for the depth yet!”

“I know, it’s just _–_!” It’s so hard to do nothing; with her heart in her throat, Dani holds her breath until the Valkyrie bursts from the ocean again, a font of spray before her and Sarah and her son roaring in unison. This time they’ve slung free a weapon from on their back, and pump round after round into the Kaiju grappling them.

Together, they sigh in relief to see the Connors resurface – Dani feels it like a wave, with additional calm buzzing in her direction from Diego. But it doesn’t diffuse the tension entirely.

Chimera rears back again under Valkyrie’s onslaught. This time, when Valkyrie is finished, the Kaiju’s body slips under the waves. And then all is quiet. Sunlight glinting off the waves and glancing off foam churned up by the titans doing battle.

“ _LOCCENT! Get me a sub-surface radar.”_ Sarah calls. “ _We’ve lost it_ , _and I need to know if it’s dead… or if it’ll be back_.”

When you’re drifting, piloting, seconds stretch until they feel like minutes. In the brief lull that follows Sarah’s request, Dani feels Diego probing at the strained edges of her mind, questioning.

“That felt too easy,” Dani says by way of a response. “Most Kaiju battles last… what, upwards of ten minutes? We’ve barely timed five since the encounter started.”

“But we know that depends on the iteration,” Diego counters. “This one’s just a Category 2, and—”

_WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE–!_

Sudden, overwhelming, everything whites out as Dani and Diego grip the sides of their head and –

* * *

“ _…copy! Phoenix, do you copy?!”_

Dani blinks her eyes, vision blurring – for a second, she doesn’t know where she is, what she’s doing. A thin babble through the ringing in her ears, and it’s like she’s catching something from a radio frequency as she flips between channels. Snatches of Spanish, slurring English, the phrase _what we make for ourselves_ though she can’t remember who said that.

Everything around her is crimson, alerts flashing and beeping frantically. There’s an absence, a blankness in her thoughts, like when she’s performing and almost forgets the lyrics right before she sings – wait, no, that’s Diego, what is..?

“ _Phoenix Echo! You are out of alignment! Repeat, you are_ both _out of alignment, you need to re-establish–”_

Every breath is audible, sounds like the wind rushing through a gap in the shell of their Jaeger, and Dani looks over to see Diego staring slack-jawed, straight ahead. As though she’s forcing her way through impact gel, Dani reaches out and grasps Diego’s shoulder. It feels like it takes a monumental effort to shake him, but as soon as she does he snaps back to consciousness.

_– she is clicking her fingers and he is opening his eyes to the warm-honied light of sunrise with sheets tangled around him and she is pushing open her older brother’s door to drop breakfast off and tell him to get his ass up already –_

“Dani..?” Diego manages. “W-what happened?”

“ _Phoenix! There was a… a power surge, both Jaegers affected, we don’t know why. But you need to move, now!_ ” Gabe urges, “ _Chimera isn’t dead, it’s on the move and bee-lining straight towards you!”_

“A power surge?” Dani repeats, slowly.

There’s a trickle of blood issuing from Diego’s nose. He lifts an arm, dazed, to brush it away, Dani unconsciously mirroring him. The Jaeger jolts slightly as its hand clanks against their cockpit in tandem.

“ _John..?_ ”

On the screen in front of them, the broadcast of visuals from Valkyrie shorts and fritzes with static; Sarah’s breathing, harsh, the tempo increasing. Something’s wrong with the Jaeger, Dani can tell even from here – she’s listing, and as she turns in the water on her heel Dani gasps.

Half of Valkyrie isn’t moving. Paralyzed. An arm dangles uselessly at her side, and one leg is partly buckled, locked at the joints. 

“ _John?! No, no–!”_ Sarah yells again, panicky, and Dani jams her finger onto a mute-channel switch just as the older woman starts to scream.

“Diego!” Dani gasps, trying to keep her attention in two places. On him, because he’s _slow,_ he’s _sluggish_ and that shouldn’t be happening; and in front of them, scanning, locking onto the v-shaped ripple darting towards them through the waves, impossibly fast.

The Phoenix is smaller. Built for agility, rather than strength. So through the tenuous connection that she has to Diego, Dani wrenches the Phoenix into action. It feels like dragging him and he’s so _heavy_.

One, two, three steps, _duck –_ the Kaiju, leaping from the waves, goes straight over top of them.

A pinching, then a burning at the back of her neck – the tail has gripped on, just above their shoulder-blades, and Dani remembers how effortlessly the Valkyrie was flung. They’ve got maybe a second.

 _Come on!!_ Dani shriek-thinks, not waiting for Diego to copy the motions she makes with her arm. 

A knife bursts forth, segments clink-clink-clinking together. They’re not fully locked when Dani _swings–_

Blue, thick, acrid blood spatters across the cockpit.

And Dani is left with a half-broken knife, the blade ragged and spitting sparks, and a meaty splash as the end of the tail detaches from their Jaeger.

Chimera yowls, the bloody mane of receptors around its face writhing. It spins to face them for an instant; Dani can see past the teeth straight into the Kaiju’s luminous gullet, and from the bowels of the creature she hears a rattling _hissss_. Terror rises up in her, and although she knows it can’t hear her, all she can think to do is return the scream in rage and fury.

The Kaiju hunches, settles in like it’s about to spring – and then tips its head back and towards the city.

In that split second of calculation, Dani realizes what’s about to happen.

“ _No,_ ” she breathes, climbing to her feet laboriously…

Too slow. The Kaiju bounds up the shoreline, each footfall a cataclysm, and away into Los Angeles.

“Dani…” She hears, not through the comms at all – and glancing over, she can see that Diego has removed his helmet.

He's swaying, silent; and she realizes her head has been her own for a short while now.

Diego’s nosebleed is worse. And now there’s broken vessels blotted all through his eyes.

“I can’t,” he starts, before his eyes roll back into his head.

Dani unhooks just in time to catch him in her arms.

 _“Phoenix,”_ Carls voice crackles into the cockpit. _“Phoenix, we are registering erratic vitals. What is your status?_ ”

“I need a medevac!” Dani chokes out, around the tears starting to threaten her ability to speak. Diego is flushed, breath wheezing in and out; as she lowers him to the floor of the Jaeger cockpit, her brother’s body starts to shake. “I think he’s seizing!”

“ _Medical assistance is en route,_ ” Carl replies, “ _please administer first aid._ ”

“ _All aerial units!_ ” Gabriel breaks in, grim and authoritative. _“We have a Category 2 Kaiju making its way towards the downtown area. Cyclone Valkyrie and Phoenix Echo are both out of commission. Please deploy. You are cleared to engage with extreme prejudice. Predator Delta’s team has been notified, but we need to buy time for reinforcements to arrive. I repeat, a Category 2 Kaiju…”_

Dani stops listening.

In the distance, columns of smoke start billowing into the air. Los Angeles burns. 

* * *

**Vancouver, British Columbia**

_2000 kilometres away, it is an overcast day in Vancouver. The news of the disaster at Los Angeles won’t break for another half hour, or so, and so life continues on as usual. An entire downtown block is cordoned off and spotlit for the filming of a romantic comedy, with gloppy, gelatinous Kaiju Blue prosthetics slapped across the pavement. Tourists stop and point at the stars, waving around the security guards as the lead actress has her face touched up. She returns their greetings with a wink._

_Pan left. Skim past the glittering, mirror-sheen of the high-rise buildings, still full of wealthy occupants – many of them American ex-pats. Canada maintains a reputation as a relative safe haven for investment; Vancouver Island is considered enough of a physical shield to keep Vancouver itself profitable. Track along the green rooftop gardens, the Japanese maples and mossy spruce – emerge into the soft grey of the Burrard Inlet._

_Stanley Park is as full of joggers, cyclists, and hikers as ever. The beaches are less busy – some of them too pebbly for many people’s liking, and the water itself iron-grey with the lack of sun. Salt water laps at massive seaweed-dappled boulders, dark with barnacles. A woman in loose-fitting cargo pants and a plaid button-down picks her way along the shoreline, collecting occasional bottles, trash, and flotsam. She does this of her own accord; the city is too damn slow to mobilize volunteer efforts in her opinion, and she thinks of this as a meditative practice now that she’s retired from nursing._

_The woman frowns, suddenly – at her feet is a melting pane of broken ice, the piece about the size and thickness of a dinner plate. Unseasonable, for this time of year; most of the ice thawed some weeks prior._

_She casts her eye up slowly – more ice, a veneer clinging to the shoreline in a clear arc and already being broken up by the motion of the water beneath its surface. Surrounding it is a latticework of slick frost. A set of hulking logs, washed ashore, block her view of whatever is at the epicenter._

_The woman approaches, shooing away some inquisitive gulls as she skirts around the slow-rotting wood. Then, she gasps – for there, half-in and half-out of the gently lapping water in the shallows, is a body._

_It is sprawled in a heavily damaged wetsuit, scrapes and burns obvious along the back and arms. The ex-nurse scrambles down the bank as quickly as she can, turns the body over gently, supporting the neck in case of spinal trauma. Matted blonde hair, crusted with drying seawater, frames an androgynous face. As the woman places two fingers along the jawline, searching for a pulse, the person she’s found takes a deep, sucking breath._

_And her electric-blue eyes flash open._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from _Back Down_ by Bob Moses.  
> Apologies to Pacific Rim fans - this AU won't feature any cameos from our faves! I'm strictly keeping to Terminator: Dark Fate characters here, with a few adjustments and liberties taken. I'll update as often as I can, and I hope it'll be a fun ride.
> 
> Bachillerato - functionally, a trade-school.  
> Qué esta pasando - "What's going on?"  
> Más valen dos cabezas que una - "Two heads are better than one"
> 
> Shout-out to shadowcrawler for consulting on the Jaeger names! And special thanks to justanexercise and starfoozle for headcanon jams related to this particular AU. This one's for you.


	2. From ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Dunno if you’ve noticed," Sarah murmurs low and gravelly. “But the world is ending. You could waste time making a decision, or you could just make one. Call me crazy, but it doesn’t seem like this job has much left for you. We’re all probably gonna die. You wanna do that here? Or in a Jaeger, proving everyone who talked shit about you wrong?”

**Acapulco, Mexico – 2025**

Dani is in the shop when the news breaks.

At first she misses it – her welding mask is dark-glassed to protect against radiation and piercing light from fountaining sparks, so it’s easy not to see workers running past her throughout the space. It’s only when the rolling machine powers down that Dani clues in to something being off. Divesting of the hood she’s just in time to yell after Marco who’s heading at breakneck speed for the lunch room.

“What’s going on?”

“Something with the Wall in Australia!” He tosses back over his shoulder. “Come on!”

With a sick lurch in her stomach, Dani fumbles off her gloves and slaps them down at her workstation. She unzips her jumpsuit as she jogs, flapping the material to circulate air under her arms. Her t-shirt sticks to her with sweat, and there’s a blockade of people around the single doorway that leads into their breakroom – through its glass window, she can see a small crowd around the shitty television affixed to the far wall. Normally tuned to football, it’s squarely on the news station – and Dani can hear the low murmur of the other fabricators. She’s too far to hear whatever the newscaster is saying, or to make out the ticker running along the bottom of the screen. A discordant thrum of fear and outrage spreads towards the fringe edges of the crowd, and Dani gives up trying to elbow her way through or see over anyone’s head.

“Hey!” She shouts. “People’s microphone. Let’s go!”

“Mic check!” The man next to her bellows, and the phrase travels inward, then ripples back out. Within minutes it’s enough to get the most important news points passed to the edges of the still-growing throng. By the end, Dani is pushing her way back the way she came. A familiar, white-hot core of anger flickers on like a pilot light inside her, the fragmented details enough to kick her adrenaline in.

_Kaiju attack._

_Category four._

_A Jaeger stopped it._

_Coastal wall breached in less than an hour._

“They said it would protect us!” She hears someone roar dimly. Another person crouches at a nearby wall, coworker rubbing his back, as he sobs. Dani can barely make out the words _ration scrip_ , before she continues on.

By the time she reaches the foreman’s office, all thoughts of propriety are gone – now there’s just the stamp-beat of her need to do something. When she bangs open the door, she has to put out a hand to catch it on the rebound.

It doesn’t help to see the foreman is in the middle of pouring himself a drink.

They stare each other down for an instant, the foreman guiltily eyeing her over his shoulder, before he turns in his chair with a rattling sigh.

“Think this might be a new record for you, Ramos.”

She tightens down the screws on her tone, channels all the self-control she’s got into keeping her words as steady and even as possible.

“Three thousand people out there. _You_ said that if we converted the production lines to support the Wall of Life, it would be secure work. The most secure we could hope for, because the construction was supposed to keep going until it was done. Do you think that work is going to continue, now? We have people to take care of. Families. You need to call a meeting.”

“Look, I get that you’re union rep, but I think waiting a couple days until things settle out–”

“ _Today_. You owe it to all of those people out there, busting their asses. They need to hear that you are going to figure out what happens next. You don’t have answers yet? Fine, but you need to tell them that you’re working on getting some.”

“Christ.” He shakes his head, downs the rest of his drink in a single gulp. Then he levels a stare at her from under a heavy brow. “The PPDC said the wall would be unbreachable. Mexico’s whole economy is in support. What happens when they can’t shift it away? You need to be prepared to talk to your people about that.”

Before Dani can open her mouth to reply, the phone at his desk rings.

“Hang on.”

“Are you going to –”

“Yes, yes, just… hello?”

Fuming, Dani straightens her back. The foreman switches from Spanish to English, and he becomes easier to tune out. She’ll have to get the other reps in the loop – Marco, since he’s her backup, and then some of the others. No way she’s getting back on a machine today. And then it occurs to her she needs to talk to Papi – he might not realize what’s happened until a neighbour drops by. She hasn’t seen Diego yet, either…

“Wait. Are you sure?”

Something in the foreman’s tone catches Dani’s ear. He’s looking at her again, brow furrowed; then he gestures her forward, holding out the receiver.

“It’s for you.”

The earpiece is cold against the side of her head, and a tiny spark of static electricity almost makes her jump.

“Hello?”

“ _You’re a hard woman to find,_ ” says a ghost.

* * *

The plant is coming to life in a different way as Dani works towards the entrance. People mill, congregate, all thoughts of work seemingly abandoned as the news spreads. She hasn’t seen this level of helplessness among her coworkers since four Jaegers got taken out in a single day, back in 2022. When they realized they were starting to lose again.

Sarah Connor is found leaning against a wall, near the reception area, out of close earshot of anyone. She doesn’t look up when Dani approaches – just continues rifling through a crinkling foil packet of chips.

“You know you can’t get this flavour in the States? Damn shame.”

“Why are you here?”

“That’s one kind of greeting.” Straightening, Sarah pops another Taki into her mouth. Her hair is shorter now, chopped to fall around her jawline, and she’s wearing aviators – but the force of her personality hasn’t lessened. With a grimness written around her mouth that Dani doesn’t remember, Sarah scans her up and down. “Years’ve been kinder to you than they’ve been to me.”

Dani folds her arms, waiting. Sarah sighs, balls up her empty snack bag, and tosses it over her shoulder into the garbage nearby.

“The program wants you back.”

Dani feels the shock of that statement all through her, like a quenching bath. Then she barks a short laugh.

“Are you kidding me?”

“No, I flew across the border and tracked you down for laughs.”

“No. No way.”

Sarah lifts an eyebrow. “You haven’t even heard why yet.”

“I have responsibilities here. I can’t just leave them behind.”

Half-spun on her heel to walk away, Dani feels Sarah’s hand clamp down on her shoulder. Stomach looping, trying to tame the half-sick reactivity spinning through her, she lets herself be turned back. Seriously, Sarah pulls off her glasses, revealing dark circles under her blue-grey eyes.

“You’re the only person in the history of the Jaeger program who’s ever piloted solo. That got the Marshal’s attention.”

“There’s _no proof_ I piloted alone! No one actually knows what happened, not even you. And the last time I was in a Jaeger, my brother—” Too late, Dani brings herself up short; Sarah’s face shutters, her mouth twisting slightly. “I’m sorry. You lost someone, I know it’s worse. But it took Diego weeks to speak, a year before he could walk again. If he pilots again, he’ll die. That’s what they told me. Why would the Marshal waste his time? I have no Drift partner.” 

“One can be arranged,” Sarah says, slipping her shades back onto her face. It occurs to Dani that she might wear them as some form of protection. “What do you think they brought a sack of bones like me back for? It sure as hell wasn’t for my charm. Dean’s never Drifted and he’s got more important things to worry about, so I get to play drill sergeant and select the best candidate to join you in your Jaeger. I actually know what to look for.”

Guilt and obligation start to creep in amidst her refusal, and Dani can feel her resistance wearing thin in the face of Sarah's cool self-assurance, the fact that she's clearly anticipated every one of Dani's protestations. So she doubles down, one last time. “Why me? Why not someone else?”

“The other viable pilots are dead, or disappeared. And Phoenix Echo hasn’t been scrapped. Most other Jaegers weren’t so lucky, once they got decommissioned.”

“…They must really be desperate,” Dani returns bitterly. “If they’ve suddenly decided I’m good enough after all.”

Sarah’s response is to lean in.

“Dunno if you’ve noticed,” she murmurs low and gravelly. “But the world is ending. You could waste time making a decision, or you could just make one. Call me crazy, but it doesn’t seem like this job has much left for you. We’re all probably gonna die. You wanna do that here? Or in a Jaeger, proving everyone who talked shit about you wrong?”

Dani takes a deep breath, trying to still the part of her that wants to seize up, overwhelmed and overdrawn. Marco could take over in a pinch, Dani knows – the union is strong enough at this point to make decisions without her. She’ll take some flak for the short notice, but they’ve dealt with more volatile crises before. And the thought of seeing the Phoenix again sends a thrill through her, whether she likes it or not… but…

“If I go with you,” she says at last. “Diego has to come with.”

* * *

“Engineering? That’s where they’re sticking me?”

“Unless you have a better idea.”

“I was never _good_ at any of this. The only reason the foreman didn’t fire me is because of you.”

Dani looks out the airplane window, so that Diego doesn’t see her smiling sadly. “How else am I supposed to keep my eye on you? I’m just glad Sarah agreed.”

“…Do you think she blames us?”

“Not as much as she must blame other people. Resents us, maybe.”

He settles back in his chair for a second, then jolts back upright and leans in like a conspirator, excitement tinging the edges of his voice. “Did you ever think we’d be going back to a Shatterdome? Much less Hong Kong?”

“No,” Dani replies softly. “I never did.”

The pilot comes on the intercom to let them know that the cabin lights are going to be dimmed – when they go, the smooth white interior of the airplane they’re on light up with a muted gradient from the fore cabin to the rear. Teal through indigo into violet.

“Try to get some sleep,” Dani says. “We have hours left to go.”

Within minutes, Diego is sprawled across three full seats a row or so behind her, covered in a rough blanket with all the arm rests up, snoring. He can get away with it; the entire flight was chartered specifically to get them where they needed to go, so the majority of seats are empty. It seems a terrible, extravagant waste. Below them, there’s nothing but inky blackness – Dani imagines the vast depth of the Pacific Ocean, the Breach that they’ll surely pass over top of as they grow closer to the mainland. Will she sense it, somehow? Should she?

Right now, she can see nothing. Of course the plane must be moving, but there are no signs or indicators of that motion; they’re heading into the dark future, and even looking up at the stars does less to orient her than she expected. The constellations are not in the places she’d expect to find them.

Feels like a metaphor, somehow.

* * *

**Hong Kong Shatterdome**

“You would think they’d have made these more comfortable in the last five years,” Dani says to her empty room, groaning and stretching out the crick in her lower back. Another bleary-eyed morning, feeling watery-headed and unreal from the time shift and jetlag, and the standard-issue mattress isn’t helping. 

The bunks aren’t more spacious than the last time she had one, either – she can cross from one wall to the next in 7 paces. Shatterdomes must have been built from a singular blueprint, Dani thinks – this one looks the same to her memory as the one in Los Angeles did. Metal walls and ceilings, concrete floors, pipes and HVAC and emergency systems winding through the overhead space. They’ve at least left hooks in the structural beams so that room assignees can personalize with extra lights, mementos, decorations… Dani’s already strung up the lanterns she brought along, some small hanging baskets in case she can get her hands on some flowers anywhere. Couple that with the photographs and mementos she’s already taped or pinned up to the panels bolted to the walls, and this place is starting to feel a little bit more like home. Sort of. Not really.

She sighs, tugging a set of leggings up to her waist and looking around for her towel. Dani catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the wall adjacent to her and frowns – her hair is a mess, and she pulls it back into something approximating a ponytail, accepting the flyaways as inevitable. At least she has a bathroom, however utilitarian, and a private shower. Diego’s been begging to use hers on occasion, rather than the communal chamber on the Engineer’s dorm-style floor.

Before she leaves, Dani pauses – the graffiti etched or drawn around her doorframe always draws her in, makes her scan through for something recognizable amid the patina of unfamiliar or stylized words. Some of it is drawn in Chinese characters; other phrases are in English, or Arabic, or Hebrew, or Japanese. She spots some Cyrillic, on occasion, and wonders how many bodies have passed through this room, how many trainees or piloting hopefuls.

Today’s slogan of interest reads, _Go big or go extinct._

She traces the permanent-marker words with her fingertips and frowns, even though she knows it isn’t meant literally.

“I’m barely over five feet tall,” she mutters, before pushing out into the hall, slinging her towel and workout bag over her shoulder and letting the door _clang_ into place behind her.

Recent days have passed in a dizzying blur of tiredness and bewildering orientations to the specific quarters and departments of this Shatterdome. And it hasn’t taken long for Dani to start wondering whether she’s made a mistake agreeing to come here.

Diego is already taking his qualification exams and safety training; Dani, on the other hand, is stuck in a holding pattern awaiting further instructions. Sarah, supposedly her mentor, has gone completely AWOL. Vanished as mysteriously and infuriatingly as she’d careened back into Dani’s life. Sarah had announced she needed to go to meetings at Marshal Dean’s request, along with delegates from every country in the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, and that she’d call when ready to start the Drift testing. Dani’d asked when that would be. Sarah’s reply? _Whenever it is that I get back from the meetings_. What should I do in the meantime? _Whatever you can think of. Go nuts._

So that was no help.

Technically, she could try to get leave to explore the city… but Sarah didn’t tell her who she’d need to inform before leaving base, and Dani has no inkling of where to go to ask. She’s stuck reading sporadic updates on the bargaining efforts from Marco, and they’re rarely going as well as she hopes. Her phone calls with Papi are nice, but achingly short, and she misses Taco _so badly_. No one told her that dogs were allowed, before she hopped on a plane that took her halfway across the world.

At least the food is good.

Entering the gym reminds her of another reason she thinks she’s made a mistake.

Because as soon as she opens the door, the dozen or so other faces in the room all swivel in her direction.

Conversation ceases.

Dani breathes deep, turns to the side to shove her things into a cubby, and starts doing some warmup stretching braced against a wall while pointedly facing away. Behind her, she can hear the clinking of weights and a low murmur of talk start up again, which is a relief – still, there’s colour rising in her cheeks. Like a neck-prickling sunburn, she’s aware of how other people _regard_ her. Their attention prowls with her around the room, tracking her movements, clinging to her like a film the whole way through her routine.

Leg press, elliptical, rowing machine, stationary cycle. Dani visits any of the machines that let her focus her gaze straight ahead and pretend she doesn’t notice a flicker of an eye here, a head turning away too-quickly there. The whisper-hush of noise that trails in her wake through the room like a wind, barely noticeable under the sounds of exertion and slightly tinny music that otherwise dominates in the space.

Pedalling furiously, increasing the friction so that she has to stand on the bike at her seat, Dani tries to concentrate on the growing ache in her muscles.

Of course they all know who she is.

Her face had been in the news for weeks. Depending on the coverage, she was alternately a hero, victim, failure, pariah, miracle, or coward. What everyone agrees on is that _Dani Ramos_ is one of four pilot names associated with the beginning of the Jaeger program’s decline.

Sweat pours down her face, her neck, her chest, and she has to slow and gradually stop. Her legs wobble by the time she climbs down from the bike. But the throbbing in her ears isn’t enough to drown out the sudden hush that follows her out of the room as well, as she heads towards the change room to shower.

All too easy to imagine what they’re saying about her.

There she is. Ramos. Phoenix falling. Wings clipped. Went up in flames on her first run, haha! She got barbequed, abandoned Los Angeles. Did half the job.

Exercise is supposed to _help_. Every time she’s come here, though, it’s the same story. Whispers. Veiled hostile, curious, or evaluative looks. Everyone looking to see what kind of legend she’s going to make for herself, what kind of person the famous Dani Ramos is. What will come down on her head, when they realize she’s _nobody_? The quality of attention is entirely different from things she’s used to back home – there, people were willing to welcome her back, with sympathy and compassion mixed alongside their disappointment. _Ah, well, not everything works out_. Other people had taken up her arguments on her behalf. Community had enfolded her, and it was easy to remember who she was among them.

Here, she’s already exhausted from having to stand on her own.

Dani hasn’t even been here for a week.

But she owes it to everyone who’s ever loved her to _try_.

Fuck it, Dani decides. She'll shower in her own room. Setting her jaw, Dani turns back and leaves before her brain eats itself alive. Enough is enough. When she finds Diego at lunch, she’ll get him to show her around – she’s going to learn this facility, and whenever the hell Sarah finally gets back, she’s going to train as hard as she ever did in her life.

This time will be different. This time she won’t let anyone down.

* * *

**Somewhere in mainland China**

Sarah stands, half-in and half-out of the shadows near the door, while Marshal Dean has his little video chat.

Predictably, the American president has surpassed all the rest in his bullheadedness, even the current PM from the U.K.

“ _—if the data from_ your _research team is to be believed, Marshal, then we’re looking_ _at a double or triple event in a matter of weeks. So, with all due respect, what the hell are your objections?_ ”

“Well, Mr. President, _sir_ ,” Dean says in a tight, clipped voice that Sarah recognizes as the one he only uses when well and truly pissed. “Given that all prior assaults on the Breach have failed, I see no reason why authorizing the use of nukes would make any difference.”

 _Those assholes_ , Sarah thinks. She’d be as angry as Dean, if she hadn’t seen this coming from a mile off. Even so, her nails dig into her arms. The nuclear option had only been shot down in the past because the Wall of Life project was so universally accepted by civilian populaces. Now that it’s failed, suddenly every nation in the world is bristling with arsenal they claimed not to have, non-proliferation treaty signatories and abstainers alike. Humanity is staring each other down over hypocrisy that might bring the world to the brink all over again… if they manage to survive the Kaiju. And through this meeting, these fuckheads are practically leaping all over themselves to be the ones who supply the warhead that’ll allegedly save humanity. Assuming, of course, that it actually _enters_ the Breach, and isn’t just repelled like the other options they’ve tried. Poisoning the oceans must be the least of their concerns. Desperate idiots. 

At least they won’t lack for ordinance to choose among.

“ _Your opinions have been duly registered,_ ” the Russian General says, with a complete lack of sincerity. “ _And I’m sure history will bear out the results._ ”

“ _You should take comfort,_ ” The U.K. Prime Minister offers, “ _that the decision not made unilaterally_.”

“I’ll work on that,” Dean counters. “If we live that long.”

“ _Did you have any other grievances to air before we adjourn, Marshal? Or would you rather just get back to your Jaeger pilots? I am to understand that the remaining pilots require some… support, before any of them are deployed in support of the mission ahead of us.”_

“None, Mr. President.”

“ _Well, then. Contact us once your K-Science Division can calculate an optimal day to attack the Breach. Let’s call this one done. America, signing off, and may God save us all._ ”

One by one, the other countries’ screens wink out to black, until only a dull glow suffuses the room. After that, the main lights flick back on.

Sarah steps further into the room.

“So that’s why you brought me? So I wouldn’t bite your head off getting _that_ news?”

“No,” Marshal Dean replies, his head turned halfway over his shoulder. His hands are still clasped behind a rigidly straightened back. Military as always. “Not just that. As far as I’m concerned, I need you to stay informed at the same rate I do. No delays. But I also called you here because I need you to do something for me.”

“Oh, so you’re finally calling in that favour?”

He nods, and she’s momentarily smug until he continues.

“I need you to keep an eye on Kündigen and Ladino.”

Sarah feels herself freeze.

“…The disgraced Kaiju junkies? Why?”

“If the nuke option has been given the go-ahead, it means a full unfreezing of assets to the remnants of the Jaeger program. Which also means their project will be greenlit.”

“Are they insane?!” Sarah chokes out. “Those _bastards_ killed John-!”

“They may have contributed towards John’s death, but you know not everyone higher up believes that. All the more reason I need your eyes and ears. Their proposal has been changed, refined over the last few years and held to closer scrutiny, but the implications for humanity are the same… and although Carl Kündigen seems to genuinely feel remorse, I’m not so sure where Gabriel Solapado’s ethics land these days.”

Sarah can feel the blood draining from her extremities, her breath growing harsher in her throat. She has to work to calm herself, much less get her next words out. “So, what? I’m supposed to babysit Ramos _and_ spy on the heads of K-Sci for you?”

“More or less. What I need to know is if either of them attempts to drift with a Kaiju again. That’s about the only thing that would be grounds for shutting things down permanently. Otherwise, they’re to have free license for their experiments. Anything they can create in the coming weeks that helps give humanity an edge.” He pivots, drops his hands to the side, steps forward towards her. When she takes a step away from him, he halts – avoids getting too far into her space. “I know it’s not fair to ask of you. The Legion project wasn’t mine to approve or disallow. But now that it’s going ahead, it needs additional oversight. Discretely. Please, Sarah. You’re the only person I trust to gather evidence, if it comes to that.”

Sarah thinks for a long, long time. The feeling is coming back to her fingers, now, but Dean's ask was still a nasty shock to the system. She hasn’t spoken to either of those two since… the incident she drinks to avoid remembering too closely. The reason she doesn’t get in a conn-pod anymore.

But if what Dean says is true, then the powers that be have already made decisions that’ll fuck everyone over. Between the nukes, the Kaiju attacks, and whatever the hell K-Sci has been given permission for, it feels like staring down a dark barrel with billions of lives in the sights. These stupid, reckless men. Of course, now that Dean has told her, he’s waiting to see if she refuses. If she does, she could get kicked from the program, or have her access restricted. If she agrees… well. Dean didn’t say she had to pretend to like them. She’ll retain her freedom of access. Evidence can always be fabricated. And if nothing else, Sarah knows where the weapons lockers are.

Vengeance might be a sweet enough motive to tolerate this role. For now.

“Goddamn you, Dean. I’ll do it.”

“You’re a good woman, Connor.”

“No, I’m not. After this? Don’t ask me for anything ever again. Get me back to the Shatterdome before I change my mind.” 

Before he can say anything more, she brushes past him to get out the door first. Hopefully Dani’s enjoyed her vacation. Because once Sarah touches back down at the Shatterdome, it’ll be long-over. The day of humanity's judgment hasn't been appointed, yet, but Sarah plans to act on the assumption that it will come all too soon.

Time to get to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last, I am back! Thank you all for your patience on this chapter. I cannot commit to a regular update schedule, but please feel free to subscribe and I'll try not to make the wait between installments too long. I'm having so much fun mashing up elements from both movies... I hope you enjoy the results. 
> 
> It's been an utter delight to hear that people are interested in this story. If you are a reader who hasn't yet watched Pacific Rim, circa 2013, _please_ do so - it is one of my favourite sci-fi apocalypse films of all time, with a deep optimism, humour, and kindness throughout. 
> 
> No Grace, yet... but she'll make an appearance next chapter.  
> Thank you for reading!


	3. Initiation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Opening up in front of her is a large room. The floors are scuffed from use but lovingly waxed, in a way that speaks to an acolyte mindset – that is, except for the mats abutted closely in the centre, with their edges firmly taped down all around the perimeter. On the far end of the room is a slightly elevated step that could be used for observation, though Dani can see hallways branching off into an unknown distance; near the door are a set of practice weapons. Blunted swords, long staffs, that sort of thing...
> 
> Beside her, Sarah makes an irritated noise in the back of her throat.
> 
> “She’s late.”

Clanging on her bunkroom’s door is what cracks Dani into wakefulness. For a second she’s convinced there’s an emergency, something at the plant, Diego needing her help with Papi again – she’s half-thrashed herself out of her twisted bedsheets before she remembers she’s in Hong Kong.

Another trio of knocks: precise, insistent. 

Muffled, she hears Sarah’s familiar voice: “Up and at ‘em!”

Fumbling partway into shoes, Dani trips over to the door, black shapes in the room coming slowly into focus. No alerts, no announcements – so it’s not an emergency. Did she sleep through an alarm? Forget about a meeting? It takes her a second to grasp the handle to unlatch the massive round door, the bulk of it creaking open before the sound of more fist-falls can reverberate through her space.

“What’s going—” Dani begins, eyes watering from the sudden flare of light in the hallway. Barely, she raises her hands up from clutching the doorframe to catch a bundle Sarah throws to her.

“I’ll give you a few minutes to collect yourself, ranger,” Sarah says, without a hint of tiredness in her voice. “Meet me out here in ten. Wear something you can move in comfortably.”

“Sarah, it’s…” Dani blearily looks over her shoulder, stifling a yawn and heel squashing her half-on sneaker into the floor. “It’s five o’clock in the morning!”

“Mmhmm. And Kaiju don’t keep to anyone’s schedule but their own, so we’ll need to work on getting you combat-ready at any time. Might as well get used to it. Ten minutes! Chop-chop!”

Emphasizing her words with a gentle shove against whatever soft bag Dani’s holding in her arms, Sarah reaches past Dani’s head to grab the edge of the door and pull it forward.

Groaning, Dani flicks on her room’s light before Sarah can plunge her into darkness once more. If her night-vision is already ruined, she might as well finish the job all the way.

* * *

After braiding her hair and changing in what felt like record time, the bundle Sarah threw at her turned out to be a mock-up of a circuitry suit. One that would need adjustments, before it could be paired to Dani’s new set of custom-built polycarbonate battle armour. Dani has to hold herself completely still, with her arms stretched out, as technicians run around her with measuring tapes and tools designed to work with the polymer material. Nearly everything needs to be shortened, despite a comment that they were starting with one of the smallest prototypes; extra material will be taken out at the waist, the limbs, basically all the major modification points.

At one point Dani’s stomach growled embarrassingly loud, and upon learning that she hadn’t had breakfast, someone ran off to get her a smoothie. This was held in front of her face to drink with a metal straw so that the fitting itself could continue. So _that_ was great. When it’s all over and done with a few hours later, a bunch of paperwork is shoved into her hands to take with her: details about the synaptic processor mesh, the telemetry enabled by the suit, summaries of the specs and an attuning schedule. She’ll have some more early mornings for the next week or so, from the looks of it. Stumbling out of her preliminary fitting, unable to stop yawning, Dani’s relieved to see Sarah waiting for her with a steaming cup and some baked good in a wax-paper wrapper.

“Thanks. What’s this?”

“Brunch. Pineapple bun and yuenyeung. I’ve got some jerky for you, too, for the protein. Faster to grab it from the express station than to wait in line.”

“Mm.” Dani sips at the coffee-spiked milk tea. “You couldn’t at least have sent word ahead that you’d be arriving today?”

“We had a red-eye back, so… no. There’s no pineapple in the bun, before you ask. It’s for the pattern on top.”

“If this is your idea of an apology… I’ll take it,” Dani mumbles around a mouthful of sweetened, enriched bread.

“Not an apology – just a way to make sure you’re fully conscious for this next bit. Come on.”

That sounds more likely. The coffee starts to kick in and slice through the residual brain-fog as Dani races to keep up with Sarah, who’s striding ahead through the hallways with an irritated look on her face.

“Your agenda for the rest of the week is still being set, before you ask.” Sarah tosses back over her shoulder, voice carrying despite the steady stream of chatter from people around them as they move closer to the central hub of the Shatterdome. “Today’s plan was pulled together last-minute, so I can’t promise it’ll be any good, but you should have calendar entries in your inbox by later today. I hate all this administrative shit, but there you go.”

“Somehow when I imagined what might have happened to you, I never pictured you doing this.”

Packed into yet another elevator, Sarah doesn’t acknowledge or respond for a good long while. Looking around her, Dani feels a strange… emotional itchiness that she has a hard time placing. Either Sarah didn’t hear her, or she’s being ignored. Did she offend her, somehow? It wouldn’t surprise her – Sarah went from warrior to… whatever they’re giving her as a title these days.

But as they step off on an upper floor, Sarah speaks up much more quietly than Dani’s used to hearing.

“In this role, I’m more mobile. And I’m a war hero, as far as most people are concerned, even if the war isn’t over by a long shot - makes ‘em less likely to fuck with me when I have something to say. Besides. I’m helping Dean with a little side project, separate from onboarding you.”

Absorbing that, Dani thinks back to the man who she’s only ever seen at a distance. She saw him testifying during the hearings back in 2020. He’d sponsored them, her and Diego, and then spoke in defence of their actions when it all went wrong. It hadn’t worked, but still… “Will I get to meet the Marshal again at some point?”

Sarah casts a glance Dani’s way. “At some point. He’s busy trying to talk a bunch of scared politicians out of trying an option for closing the Breach. We know it won’t work, but it sounds _really_ good to them right now. So you’re stuck with me. Not far now.”

Dani thinks she knows where this is heading, and as Sarah pushes open a door single-handed, Dani sees that she’s right.

Opening up in front of her is a large room. The floors are scuffed from use but lovingly waxed, in a way that speaks to an acolyte mindset – that is, except for the mats abutted closely in the centre, with their edges firmly taped down all around the perimeter. On the far end of the room is a slightly elevated step that could be used for observation, though Dani can see hallways branching off into an unknown distance; near the door are a set of practice weapons. Blunted swords, long staffs, that sort of thing. The concrete walls and massive pipes along the walls aren’t concealed in any way, but that speaks more to this room being repurposed in a hurry at some point in the past than to a lack of attention to detail. Breathing in, Dani smells the chemical tang of cleaners – fresher than in the gym she uses for her daily workouts.

Beside her, Sarah makes an irritated noise in the back of her throat.

“She’s late.”

“Not likely,” comes a new, irreverent voice from behind them both. “You’re _early_.”

“By two minutes,” Sarah comments, and Dani spins on her heel at the same time that Sarah does. “So that hardly counts.”

The woman in front of them doesn’t reply.

From under scruffy, dirty-blonde bangs, a pair of the bluest eyes Dani’s ever seen – almost incandescent – widen to the point of shock. They meet Dani’s with perfect, stricken clarity. Whoever she is, she’s wearing a dark blue sleeveless jumpsuit, buttons open to the waist, with a fitted exercise shirt underneath – and she’s _tall_. Her arms are folded casually across her chest, and Dani is astonished at the musculature on display as a result. But they relax, a little – also clearly from surprise. The moment feels flash-frozen.

“This is Grace,” Sarah is saying. “She’s going to be your trainer.”

Then Sarah catches the look that Grace is giving Dani, and continues with a sigh. “Yes. This is Dani Ramos. _That_ Dani Ramos. Close your mouth, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“You didn’t tell me I’d be working with _her_!” Grace blurts, and Dani flinches.

It wasn’t intentional. But Dani watches as Grace clocks her reaction, composes herself. Grace even shoves her hands into her pockets in an attempt to look more casual. The damage is still done.

“Didn’t I? Must’ve slipped my mind.” Dani barely feels it when Sarah nudges her in the arm – she’s too busy controlling her own expressions, breathing to stay calm. “This one’s been out of practice for the better part of five years, so you might have your work cut out for you. Get comfortable, you two! I’ve gotta go to another godforsaken meeting, but I’ll be back.” 

And just like that, Sarah’s gone. She pushes past Grace, who still hasn’t moved, and closes the door behind her. Without her presence, the room suddenly feels cooler – or maybe that’s all in Dani’s imagination.

Grace clears her throat.

“Uh. I didn’t mean to–”

“So! You’ll be my trainer?” Dani turns away, taking rapid steps towards the matting. She kicks off her shoes, one at a time, without bending down. Then she peels off her socks, balancing her ankle on each thigh, before stepping barefoot onto the surface. Below the soles of her feet she feels a springiness, which she tests by bouncing slightly from one leg to the next. “What are your qualifications?”

“Most of my experience is in mixed martial arts. A bit of jujutsu. I’m best at hand-to-hand and improvised weapons.”

Hoping that she projects indifference convincingly, Dani turns back around, starting to swing her arms into preliminary stretches. Nothing too rigorous. If she’s glaring a little, all the better – let this Grace see that she’s ready, and able to learn, no matter what she thinks of Dani. “How will we start?”

“You should warm up first,” Grace says, reluctantly stepping forward. The carefulness in her movements and her voice placate Dani… a little.

“I’m fine,” Dani lies. “I did before I got here. What, you haven’t seen me in the gym on our level at all? I’m there every day.”

“I couldn’t have. I’m not a cadet.”

Dani stops stretching.

“You’re not?”

Shaking her head, Dani gets another, closer look at Grace’s features. Something drawn and tired in her face, around the eyes. Maybe wistful?

“I didn’t qualify. Clearance issues. I trained would-be Rangers instead, until the funding got cut. This is the first time I’ve been called back into a Shatterdome in months. They flew me in, along with… whatever’s left of us. To consolidate.” 

So Grace is someone else who might not have measured up. A desire to continue her pretences battles out Dani’s desire to relent, to be genuine. The latter impulse wins. “I’m sorry.”

As though it doesn’t bother her, Grace shrugs; but Dani also sees a last bit of tension bleed from Grace’s posture. “It’s fine. This might be our last stand. I’m tired of seeing people die.”

“You and me both,” Dani replies at last, and then the two of them lapse into a prolonged, awkward silence.

Grace breaks it first, striding forward and doing up the buttons on her jumpsuit. The transition is startling. Dani watches her adopt a purposeful bearing, fluid and powerful.

“Do you need to run through stances, or would you rather just spar?”

Twenty minutes later, and Dani is regretting her refusal of a warmup – or the stances, for that matter. Some strands of hair have pulled loose from her braid. Most fall around her face, and she has to swipe them out of the way in between blocking Grace’s jabs. It’s _obvious_ that Grace is holding back, too – there’s quickness to her motions, lightness, like she’s anticipating Dani’s counters a split second before they happen.

But Dani is smaller. Even though she’s starting to flag, her centre of gravity is lower – and she can dodge, and weave, in ways that Grace isn’t always able to compensate for quickly. Dani gets a few good strikes or kicks in, and each one receives a low noise of approval. At times, Dani thinks, it feels more like a dance than a sparring match.

Still.

“Enough!” She gasps, after Grace pins her to the ground on her back for the third time in five minutes.

Panting, flushed, with a hint of a grin playing around her mouth, Grace releases Dani’s leg from where she’s locked it against her side with an arm, and helps her up to sitting.

Her palm is warm, Dani has time to register, and calloused pleasantly.

As Dani catches her breath, Grace goes to the side. Dani can see her bending in her periphery, picking up two water bottles and a hand towel. Then, Grace sits down next to Dani. It was an intelligent way to be fighting – conserving both of their energy, while reminding Dani what it feels like to anticipate someone else’s steps. But that doesn’t lessen the twinge of annoyance that Dani feels towards herself.

“Not bad,” Grace congratulates, passing Dani some water and patting down her own face and neck with the towel. “We’ve got some work to do, but you’re off to a good start.”

Now static has added itself to the list of problems Dani’s hair is currently experiencing. She smooths down her braid self-consciously, aware that the action isn’t making any difference. Grace is right next to her. Dani can feel the warmth of the other woman’s body, she’s sitting so close. Grace starts rubbing her wrists. Using the heels of her hands to press out the muscles of her lower back.

To keep herself from watching too closely, Dani takes a drink of her own before speaking. “You don’t have to try to make me feel better.”

“I mean it.”

“I could tell!” Dani grouches, unable to help herself. “You handed me the bouts I won, and… you saw the results of the rest.”

“You’re right,” and it stings a little how easily Grace admits it, once pressed. Dani sees her sling the towel casually along her neck. “But you can’t push it, Dani. We need to go gradually, or you’ll be no good to anyone.”

Considering Grace’s words is as simple as dismissing them. “…How often am I supposed to be seeing you?”

At that, Grace looks surprised. “Every other day.”

“And how long until I’m supposed to start testing for Drift Compatibility?”

“You meet the cadets on the list in a week.” Seeing Dani’s face fall, Grace rushes to continue. “But that’s only the preliminaries. The actual tests will take at least a week themselves after that. You should be back in the Phoenix within the month – barring something happening in the meantime.”

“Something?”

“A Kaiju attack.”

There’s a sudden lurch in Dani’s stomach. “What happens if a Kaiju comes before I’m able to pilot the Phoenix?”

“The other three Jaeger teams are here,” Grace reassures. “Crimson Typhoon, Cherno Alpha, Coyote Tango… Someone else will be able to step in – though it would push the schedule up some. They’re going to need you for the Breach mission, but if we’re lucky, not before then.”

Then, a troubled look passes over Grace’s face like a shadow. “Has no one told you any of this yet?”

To confirm Grace’s suspicion would require complaining about Sarah, the lack of communication or direction, everything. So instead, Dani deflects. “I want to see you _every_ day. Not for a full session, on the off days, but I still need consistency. I need extra time.”

The gambit works – Grace’s eyes widen slightly again, and Dani can practically sense the woman weighing what Dani’s asking for. She’s expecting another refusal. Or to have to argue her case, convince Grace further that she can handle it. Instead, after barely a moment’s thought, Grace concedes.

“Okay.”

“Really?”

Grace leans forward, tucking her knees behind her arms. “I know what you’re capable of. And I can figure out some way of balancing the kinds of work that we do so you don’t overdo it.”

Under Grace’s sidelong regard, Dani feels a flush start to rise up in her neck. “Thank you.”

She’s afforded a brief smile. “Don’t mention it.”

Then, Grace angles her face towards the entrance to the room. She plants her hands on the ground, giving herself leverage so that she can stand. “We’ve got company.”

A second later, the doors creak open; Dani’s left wondering how the hell Grace knew, and scrambles to her feet.

“How’re things going?” Sarah’s asking before she’s even fully entered the room.

“Fine,” Grace answers, putting some distance between them. “Dani’s not as far behind as you implied. She needs to work on not locking her elbows, but you undersold her. We’re going to increase the number of times we meet and develop some more advanced techniques before she gets back in a conn-pod.”

“Good. Keep me posted. In the meantime…” And Sarah brandishes a folder in her hand, the glossy cover bulging out from the weight and heft of the pages contained within. “Now that you’re all warmed up, Ramos, you’ve got some afternoon reading to do. Candidate profiles. You should get to know who you’re about to be up-close and personal with.”

Dani feels herself slump in disappointment. Stepping off the mat and grabbing up her own towel, Dani directs her attention towards Grace one last time. “I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

Now that Sarah’s back in the room and a report delivered, Grace seems to revert back to a more guarded demeanour. “You’ll know where to find me.”

For an instant Dani thinks Grace is about to say something more, but she just turns, strides to the back hallways, and disappears around a corner.

* * *

There's still hours left before Dani is allowed time to herself; most of them are full of endless technical reading and refreshers on Jaeger features. No matter how much she protests that it's stuff she already knows - like riding a bicycle - Sarah insists that they continue racing through it. _You don't have to convince me, but there will be a test, and the more you prepare for it the better off you'll be._ Her brain feels like it's leaking out of her ears by the time she and Sarah separate, and she makes the long trek back to her quarters. No sooner has Dani shut the door to her room, ready to shower and wring the day from herself, than there’s rapping on the door. Aggrieved, groaning in frustration, Dani heaves herself back up from where she’s flopped down on the covers and flings open the door.

“I’m not in the—”

Diego stands there, a grin playing around his mouth, holding two trays of food. “Not in the mood for dinner? That’s not the sister I know – whoa, whoa, _whoa!_ ”

It’s all he can do to keep from dropping the trays, but Dani doesn’t care – she’s too busy hugging him in relief.

Over dim sum, Dani vents her frustrations and explains the events of the last few days. Diego listens, politely nodding, but when Dani mentions her sparring instructor he sits up a little straighter.

“So wait – your instructor is a woman?”

“If that’s a comment…”

“Not at all! What is she like?”

In her mind’s eye Dani pictures Grace again – her height, the cool low tone of her voice, the effortless fluidity of her body, her control. “She’s… interesting.”

“You’re blushing.”

“I am not!”

“Are so!” He elbows her in the ribs and Dani smacks his arm. “Ow! Admit it!”

“Under no circumstances.”

“Well? What does _interesting_ mean, then?”

Dani picks up another bit of sticky rice from its lotus-leaf wrapping and considers the question more honestly. “Grace is… the only person here so far to check in with me. She didn’t say much, but what she did say was… I don’t know. I got the impression that she actually cared about me and wanted me to stay informed. Considering today is the first day anyone’s bothered to do that, it left an impression.”

The rice falls from her chopsticks to her lap, and Dani curses.

“Will you let me attend?”

“Hm?” Attempting to retrieve the bite is doing more harm than good.

“When they select your new partner. Can I be there? I want to make sure whoever it is, is good enough.”

Diego looks vulnerable, when Dani looks up at him, and she gives him another light slug in the shoulder. “Of course. You’re my brother.”

“Good.” He takes a deep breath. “Now, are you going to ask me about what _I’m_ doing?”

Dani gapes at him.

“Oh!”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve been – it’s been a week, and I haven’t even… yes, of course! Tell me about the other engineers, I’m so sorry!”

And as Diego starts talking, mischievously embellishing the details of his experiences so far in training, Dani lets herself stop thinking about what’s expected of her. That’s the trouble, she realizes. It’s been easy to stay preoccupied with the thought that she and the other pilots are most important – listening to Diego talk about the refurbishing efforts and development labs, Dani’s reminded of how much of a collective effort this is. He elaborates on the current status of the Jaegers at this final Shatterdome – they had to be disassembled partially and reassembled on-site, in order to arrive at all. The last four Jaegers in existence, out of the thirty that were commissioned. Most are getting put together. The Phoenix is one that requires little in the way of maintenance, but a lot in terms of upgrades. He’s not qualified to do much of the advanced work, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t keeping tabs on how things are coming together. Over the coming days, he’ll be introduced to the researchers in the K-Science Division as well, to learn how Engineering’s work intersects with theirs.

After getting caught up, Dani’s passing-out exhausted – she shoos Diego out of her room, before collapsing back in her bed. She should get changed, she thinks muzzily, as her head grows heavier as moments elapse and stretch out. And if she doesn’t foam-roll, or do some stretches, she’s going to ache tomorrow. Today was a lot.

Her last disjointed thought before she falls asleep fully clothed, is that she _doesn’t_ actually know where to find Grace, outside of the training room. Dani thinks maybe she ought to change that.

* * *

Sarah pulls a glass of whiskey across her desk towards her, the ice-cubes inside clinking gently against one another. In a single motion, she drains it. With her workspace shoved this far into the facility, she’d need her orange-toned lamps regardless of the hour; no windows. But the prickling at the corners of her eyes tells her that it’s nighttime. Glancing at the clock confirms her suspicion as fact. Take this as a nightcap; turn in, do it all again tomorrow morning. 

Yet when she closes and locks the door behind her, ready to head back to her personal quarters, Sarah gets a different kind of prickle along her nape. At a glance, the source of it makes herself apparent. 

“You do realize you can just send me a message, right?”

Leaning against the wall nearby, Grace glowers at her. “I’d rather keep this off the record.”

“Oh?” Sarah flicks back in her memory – there hasn’t been much time to get to know this woman, although a vague reputation precedes her. On Sarah's end, she's had... what, a dozen interactions with Grace? None of them with this level of familiarity shown. Her reaction earlier upon seeing Dani... nothing in her file to explain that, although Sarah admittedly had skimmed the thing before signing off on Grace’s application to transfer here as a trainer. Her presence here, now, is a surprise. 

“It’s one thing to keep me in the dark about mission specifics,” Grace is saying. “I get it. But Dani’s going to be someone that you pin your hopes on, and you’re not keeping _her_ on the level? Judgment Day is coming – how is she supposed to do a good job if she doesn’t even know why she’s here yet?” 

Sarah shrugs. Who knows what kinds of conversations the two of them had while she was out of the room? “I just got back myself. So sue me.”

Grace pushes herself up and towards Sarah; there’s just enough distance for this not to be a threat, but not enough to prevent this from being insubordinate. “Pushing a bunch of paperwork at her without guidance isn’t going to cut it. You need to do better with her briefings. Or else I won’t be able to do my job.”

“I’ll be sure to take that into consideration,” Sarah responds sarcastically. “Dismissed.”

Without waiting to see how Grace takes _that_ particular statement, Sarah pushes past her. Not her problem, unless Grace does something like this again. The encounter nevertheless gnaws at Sarah, for some reason, and she mulls it over like a bad aftertaste. Her decompression time for the evening had been going so well, too. Something Grace had said.

All the way through stripping out of her day clothing, Sarah’s still thinking about it. Grace Harper. Some combination of factors had kept her from becoming a pilot, although she’d been able to demonstrate an aptitude for fighting methods useful to the task… and she’d risen through the internal ranks at the L.A. Shatterdome accordingly. But Sarah also knew it was like she’d appeared out of nowhere, one day. Insisted on work.

Partway through shrugging on a nightshirt, what's nagging at her clicks. 

Clearance issues.

Grace had clearance issues. Her at-a-glance profile wasn’t specific about the nature of them, but they were serious enough to disqualify her from further consideration in the Jaeger program.

But if she’s talking about Judgment Day – the working title for the nuke option that no one except for Sarah and Dean ought to know about right now – then this Shatterdome has bigger issues than Sarah thought. Doesn't matter that the information was set for release among high-ranking officers and the core Jaeger coordination teams. Somewhere, somehow, there’s a leak.

It’s bothering her enough to warrant sending out an encrypted request to the Personnel Division. They'll see it first thing in the morning. Hopefully, that'll be soon enough.

It’s time to take a closer look at Grace’s file.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge and hearty thanks to all of you who've read so far - your comments and enthusiasm have been really delightful thus far! I've been getting onboarded for a new job, and this world has been so much fun to dive into and think about as a background process to all of that, and everything else going on in the world. 
> 
> Things are kicking into gear here - Grace has arrived! Not only are she and Dani going to be working in close proximity, but she seems to know more than she's supposed to... wonder why that could be?
> 
> I hope to be back with more soon - in the meantime, I'll be dreaming of pineapple buns. Wistful sigh goes here.


	4. Wayfinding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while - so here is a quick recap of events from the fic so far!
> 
>  **Prologue:** In 2020, Diego and Dani are introduced to their pilot mentors Sarah and John, as well as Carl and Gabriel of the K-Science division, on their orientation in the Los Angeles Shatterdome. After learning that the Kaiju share a hive mind, a Kaiju attacks unexpectedly. Dani and Diego suit up to hold the Miracle Mile while Sarah and John battle - but something goes horribly wrong and both Jaegers fall out of alignment simultaneously. John is killed instantly, Diego badly injured, and the escaping Kaiju ravages LA.
> 
>  **Chapter 1:** Sarah Connor tracks the Ramos siblings down where they've been working in a factory in Mexico in 2025. When the Wall of Life fails, Dani agrees to be recruited back for the Jaeger Project - on the condition that Diego can come with her although a neural injury suffered in 2020 has rendered him unable to pilot ever again. They arrive in Hong Kong, and despite an immediate flare-up of imposter syndrome, Dani resolves to do the best she can as a pilot. Meanwhile, Major Dean warns Sarah that Carl and Gabriel need to be watched... to ensure they don't attempt to drift with a Kaiju. Again.
> 
>  **Chapter 2:** Sarah arrives and unceremoniously begins Dani's formal training. She is introduced to Grace, her sparring trainer, who will help prepare Dani for the Drift Compatibility testing she must undergo to find a new partner. Grace reacts with shock at seeing that she'll work with Dani, but they quickly put that aside. Grace is not eligible as a pilot, Dani learns in a post-sparring conversation. Grace, unimpressed with Dani's lack of knowledge about the mission she'll be sent on, confronts Sarah alone a few hours later. In the course of doing so, Grace accidentally reveals that she knows the name of the classified plan to close the Breach: Judgment Day... and Sarah decides to look more closely into just who Grace Harper is.
> 
>  **Chapter 3:** Current!

Days go by, with a much more civilized start time established for each. Along with this new schedule, Dani’s routines shift and click neatly into place, accommodating purposeful movement from one place to the next. Her aimless wanderings through endless concrete-and-steel corridors come to an end; now, it’s clear that each part of the complex has its own purpose, and flinging herself from one area to the next rapidly acquaints her with the wayfinding cues and shortcuts.

The entirety of the Shatterdome would appear like a massive circular complex if viewed from above, abutted to an enormous docking area where the Jaegers can launch from, or materials and supplies be brought in by ferry or ship. Dani has seen the floorplans, near every elevator – the structure has four main levels plus a basement, and five hallways on each, branching from a spacious central chamber like the arms of a starfish. Two of the resulting segments are entirely taken up by personnel living quarters, along with dining, medical, and recreational facilities.

The other three segments are home to the critical services needed to support Jaegers: the Engineering Department, which includes maintenance as well as manufacturing; K-Science Division, which encompasses wet and dry labs and has direct lines to the LOCCENT chamber that eats up most of level 4; and Intelligence and Administration, which lies sandwiched between the other two and is a catch-all for the rest. Training documentation, mission briefings, pilot outfitting, communications, that sort of thing. Dani could have wandered, lost, for days straight in those parts; and she had, until Sarah showed up again. Now, her handheld chimes now and again, directing her to a specific room and level when her presence is required. If she needs it, a holographic foot-map displays, hovering just above the surface of the handheld. More and more, she doesn’t need it.

There are the cadet and ranger living quarters, which she is most familiar with. New information: the other floors below that are designated to various corps, depending on work function. Diego’s is near the ground level, where the engineering bays are located. He shows her the loading docks, where they can dangle their legs off the concrete and talk over coffee while others sneak a cigarette around them in between material shipments. Salt air blows in from the bay, carrying with it a metallic edge and a tinge of sun-rotting seaweed – but still fresh, invigorating. Dani likes to close her eyes and let it wash over her before she’s summoned back.

Diego talks animatedly about the Jaeger maintenance itself. His work experience has come in handy; they’ve got him galvanizing or re-painting plates that can be swapped out on the Jaegers post-battle. After the next battle, she learns, he’ll be part of the team that deals with corrosion protection: he’s been training on re-greasing Jaeger joints, welding shut holes, scouring salt-residue, buffing off rust. It’s the most excited she’s heard him sound about work in years, and that along is enough to galvanize her own spirits. Some moments, it feels like this is the only peace she gets – back among the workers. Her own descriptions of what she’s doing are strained, her brain skipping around and between recollections like a stone.

On her first go-round in the simulator, Dani goes down to a Kaiju almost immediately. Sarah’d booked the space, and she slams the reset button from the control room. From there, she can observe Dani and adjust the simulation parameters; Dani pulls off her VR headset upon ‘death’, right when the visuals freeze. Sarah hits a couple of keys on the keyboard, yanks the microphone towards her with a light squeal of feedback, and speaks into Dani’s earpiece. Her words give Dani’s smarting confidence as soft a place to land as a ravine full of cacti. 

“That was bullshit. Let’s get serious – that Kaiju’s going to take the Mexican coastline, kill your entire family. What do you do?”

Dani sets her jaw, slams the headset back over her eyes. This time, and the next several simulations that follow, she pushes through ten drops and nine kills. When she re-emerges Sarah nods in approval.

“Better. Now we just have to work on your aim.”

She works on her aim.

Closer to the launch bays themselves, where the Jaegers stand tall and at attention and headless, there are the rooms where Dani is fitted and suited. The blank doors along the corridors here conceal massive humming servers, communications hubs, calibration labs. This is where she comes for an hour each day, to have electrodes fixed to her temples and along her spine while they tweak some aspect of her new armour and how it links up with her nervous system. She catches a glimpse inside a room, one day, where she sees miniscule instruments moving autonomously along the shell of a chest-plate – and then the scientists overseeing the work from some nearby computers see her, smile in that awkward way that shows they’re trying to be polite but don’t appreciate her presence, and shut the door remotely with a pneumatic hiss.

Intel-Admin is also where teams would have accomplished data transfer between other Shatterdomes, in the Jaeger program’s heyday. Now, Dani passes doors that have printed notices slapdashedly taped up to the doors informing people that these rooms are no longer in active use, most of the division having been laid off or transferred to the Wall of Life headquarters dotted along Pacific Rim nations’ coastlines. The whole area is filled with the quiet that only comes from abandonment. Partway down the hallway, the lighting just cuts out entirely, despite doors continuing on like silent sentinels awaiting activation. Dani usually turns back with a creepy feeling tingling down her spine long before she reaches any of them, curiosity outweighed by unease.

Livelier zones include the K-Science Division’s quarters, which is always bustling with people and which Dani’s heard is the only division to increase their funding in the last five years. Equally busy is the research center and library, where she has to go for the technical testing and examinations to prove that she’s still familiar with the Jaeger systems. Pleasantly, she’s able to take the tests in Spanish, which helps immensely on her recall. Although her brain wanted to leak out her ears in mutiny rather than cram in a bunch of technical info, she’s still glad that Sarah insisted on the review process. If Dani didn’t come out of the exams feeling _confident,_ at least she exits them not feeling like a failure. When her results arrive in her inbox, they’re excellent. Diego claps her on the shoulder, swings her into a jostling one-armed hug, and insists he never expected anything less. 

The activities are varied, but grueling – Dani is so physically and mentally tired by the time she retires to her room that her sleep is deep and dreamless. To maintain anything resembling down-time, Dani starts to take lunches and dinners in the mess hall with Diego and his new friends. Today she slurps down noodles and high-protein dishes, sitting still to try and not aggravate whatever muscle groups are sore today, and lets their chatter wash over her.

“Which bay you assigned to this week?”

“3-A; gonna be torqueing up some plasma cannon housing, apparently.”

“They’ve stuck me on muscle strand engines.”

“Oof – don’t envy you that, combustion risk in tight spaces, eh?”

“Yo, you heard about the Legion project yet?” One of Diego’s buddies nudges him in the shoulder as Dani glances up. “They put out another call for code monkeys again.”

“What’s that?” Dani asks. “The Legion thing?”

“Somethin’ K-Sci is putting together. You gotta have a decent background check on top of the usual qualifications, but… there’s a bonus, if you don’t churn out spaghetti code and things parse correctly.” 

“Well, that excludes me,” Diego says cheerfully, digging back into his plate of food. “I’m only good for the grunt work.”

“Suit yourself. I might apply. Might need someone to bring me coffees in the morning though, I’ll be pulling some late nights to get through the testing. You know that they onboard newbies by getting them to debug a segment of what they’ve already developed?”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Dani breaks in. “Aren’t they just using you, if they’re not compensating that work?”

Diego’s engineering friend just shrugs, becoming a fraction more guarded. “Money’s not going to mean a lot if we don’t make it to see next year. Maybe I just want to know I’m contributing. It’ll be a fun change of pace from power tools.”

The conversation continues from there a little more somberly. No longer hungry, Dani picks at her food – forces the last of it down, because she needs the energy. Too soon it feels like the engineers are all slapping their hands against the table and moving along. A pang of homesickness roils through her, one that kicks her mood from _melancholic comfort_ straight into the _border of alienation_ zone. She pauses partway through gnawing on her lower lip to see Diego lingering.

“Any news yet?” he asks; and he means the pilot testing.

“Four days from now,” Dani replies. “After the weekend.”

“Well hey; do you want to kick back? Me and some of the guys, we’re pulling together a hangout in one of the common rooms; I’ll be bringing my guitar—”

His face falls when Dani shakes her head. “I’m going to be catching up on sleep.” _And refining a few more moves in the training room so I don’t make a fool of myself,_ she thinks, but keeps that to herself. 

Reproachful, now, Diego leans his head in. “So the all-work, no-play is fine when other people do it? What about yourself, so you don’t drop?”

“It’s different, I’m a ranger,” Dani says too quickly, “salaried not hourly—” but then she catches what she’s saying and a flush rises in her neck. They both send money back to Papi. They both know whose contributions are larger.

The sunshine of his mannerisms weakening, like a cloud is passing over, Diego just shrugs and tips his head in deference to her. “You’re the boss,” he says quietly. “Just take breaks, okay? Real ones.”

Partway through her next set of simulations, Dani gets a notification with the time and room number for the gathering – tomorrow night. She clicks _maybe_ – and then, sudden restless anger rising up in her like carbonation, Dani fires up target-practice mode.

Diego is having _so much fun_ , and that’s not fair. Where does he get the nerve to tell her, breezy as ever, that she should be _slacking off?_ As if she has time to be frivolous – as if any of this is normal! If he was still able to Drift, he’d be singing a different tune. They’d both be cramming, squabbling and arguing over the finer details, working together. Things would be different. A Kaiju roars up in front of her, claws snatching out towards her like they’ll crumple her Jaeger’s Conn-Pod in one go. Dani roars back, discharges round after round. She’s not satisfied until the rendered chest cavity is a pulpy, luminous ruin of blue. And even then, Dani only feels a little bit better.

It’s not his fault. Some part of her yearns for the solidity of a tool in her hand, a straight-forward problem or task to complete, simple expectations. She’s doing a poor job of being a good older sister; but what else can she do? Normally she would celebrate her successes along with Diego’s, even if they were tracking along different paths.

But each minor victory only serves as a reminder to her: the investment needs to be worth it. And if she’s not primed and ready to link up with a partner, someone, _anyone,_ she’ll be worse than useless. Of all the things she’s not prepared to see, a look of disappointment on Diego’s face tops the list. After closing out the programs and locking up the sim room, Dani ignores the map suggestions flaring up from her handheld, opting instead to take a longer route to her next appointment. Her path takes her across the main floor of the Shatterdome, in the cavernous interior that has line-of-sight into the Jaeger launch chambers. From there, when she looks up, she can see the clock that tracks the time since the last Kaiju landing - the one in Sydney that took down the Wall of Life, staring this whole mess.

19 days, 7 hours, and 35 seconds… 36… 37… 38…

“If someone wants to write some code in their free time, or host a party, that’s their business,” she hisses to herself, frustration a high sour note in the back of her mouth. “Stick to yours.”

* * *

Somehow, although the rest of the Shatterdome is rousing itself with the arrival of new personnel every day – along with dread anticipation, wondering if _this_ is the day that the next Kaiju will land, or tomorrow – Dani’s found another bubble of calm in her daily training sessions. Dani also realized quickly that she misjudged Grace. Not only is the other woman willing to work with Dani, but she apologized on the second day for her outburst.

“I just wasn’t expecting to see you,” Grace confessed. “It came out wrong. You probably deal with a lot of shit. I didn’t mean to add to that.”

The hesitancy Grace shows Dani when conversing seems to have more to do with latent awkwardness than hostility. At the end of each bout, Dani has turned to glance at Grace’s reaction. Often, satisfaction pulls at the corners of the other woman’s mouth… along with something else. When Dani places the emotion, she wonders how the hell she missed it. Grace looks slantwise at her with _admiration –_ raw and shining, and not at all something that Dani feels like she’s earned yet. Grace is a better fighter than Dani is. They both know it. Evidence enough of that fact each time Dani gets picked back up off the floor by Grace’s proffered hand. Or when Grace’s brow furrows, for an instant, and she steps in close to adjust Dani’s stance.

But Grace looks at her that way when she doesn’t realize Dani can see it, and that feels so good that Dani wants to try harder. Make herself more worthy of what’s clearly being given to her anyways. Grace is witness to her progress… and more generous in her feedback than Sarah is. So Dani is grateful to keep the extra sessions, even if the temptation has grown stronger each day to intentionally slip up. Just on the off-chance that Grace might put her hand on Dani’s lower back again, or shift her arms into the correct position.

Today, she’s feeling guilty and strange enough from lunch with Diego to not even attempt _that._ Right now, it’s strictly business. Grace picks up on that. Silence is welcome, other than an occasional murmured suggestion or the sounds of exertion and clacking of short-staffs. That same quiet means that Dani hears it, when someone enters the room towards the end of the session. Ignoring the disturbance, she continues to spar. Good thing, too – she would have had her feet knocked out from under her by a sweep of Grace’s leg.

Grace is strong, neat, precise, relentless. Blocking her swings makes Dani’s palms sting, the vibrations buzzing up her forearms. But the arcs are something she’s beginning to sense. Overhand. Left. Shift back, and wait for a window: there–!

After getting a point and tying their score, her staff aimed at the soft hollow of Grace’s throat, Dani looks towards the door to see Sarah standing there – observant, impassive. 

“You could have taken her two steps earlier,” Sarah notes.

“But I didn’t,” Grace replies as she stands down, answering the question of who Sarah was talking to. “And Dani nailed the form as a result. It’s called _teaching_. Do you need something?”

“I need to borrow Dani. Not now,” Sarah continues, as both Dani and Grace open their mouths to protest. “When she’s done. Don’t mind me, I’ll just make myself comfortable and watch.”

Proceeding to do just that, Sarah takes up a spot near the door; there’s a bench there, a few of them, and she perches cross-legged atop one as though that could possibly be comfortable. Dani looks back at Grace; Grace lifts an eyebrow. Dani tips her head with the faintest hint of a shrug. Inside, her heart is pounding and her mouth is going to cotton – but she’s not about to let Sarah see that.

Dani turns on her heel to step away, back into position. Hefts the short-staff in her hand, giving it a thoughtful twirl through her palm and across the back of her hand. Hearing a sound behind her, Dani whirls –

Her staff parries Grace’s with a _crack!_

Dani shoves, up and away; like a blink, moves forward.

One, two, three strikes – Grace shifts her feet back with each of Dani’s hits, not lifting her soles from the floor. A breath before she moves, Dani knows where she’ll be swinging – and again, their staffs crash into each other. Dani’s is on top, and Grace quirks her eyebrow again. Approvingly, this time.

Then she knocks Dani’s staff up and away, and jabs in. The point of her staff halts a centimetre before it can collide with Dani’s navel. She feels her stomach suck in reflexively.

“Two-one.” Grace says low and casual.

Dani narrows her eyes.

With Grace easing away, Dani pulls her short-staff back down towards a ready stance. Then, in a single sharp motion – she knocks Grace’s staff aside, so that it points to the ground. Before Grace can blink, Dani’s staff is along the side of her neck like a blade. A bead of sweat rolls down the line of Grace’s throat; the tendon stands out, as her chin tilts up in pleased surprise.

“Two-two,” she returns with equal nonchalance, and in her peripherals Dani can see that Sarah is leaning in with her fingers intertwined in front of her mouth. 

“You’re fast,” Grace murmurs.

“And you’re looking for an opening,” Dani replies, not shifting their still-unbroken eye contact.

A flicker of Grace’s movement, and Dani ducks –

The staff whistles over her head. Like a shadow shifting with a light source, Dani uses her existing momentum to slip around to Grace’s back. Grace is already following her, twisting on her heel, and Dani has a moment to plan – _turn_ – before she swings again.

Without looking, arm bent over her shoulder, Grace parries. Dani is close enough that she can see the corded lines of muscle and tendon straining in Grace’s forearm, the swell of her bicep. It’s a really good look. And, despite the awkward angle at which the block was made, Dani can still feel evidence of Grace’s strength.

“Not bad,” Grace says, and Dani blinks. 

Then she adjusts her approach, finds the gap in Grace’s line of defence, and gently shoves the end of her short-staff against where she _thinks_ a kidney would be.

“Three-two. Match.” Swallowing, Dani steps back and away. There’s a flush rising up into her neck that she hopes will pass as mere exertion.

Clapping, slow and somehow sardonic, echoes through the room. “Better,” Sarah calls out. “Well. I’m glad I got to see that. It’ll be interesting to see how things go in the real bouts.”

Grace had been tucking her staff in along her side, like sheathing a sword; but on hearing Sarah’s words, she stiffens. Dani watches as Grace’s eye hone in across the room to target-lock on Sarah’s face.

“It will,” Grace replies tightly. “Won't it?”

Sarah crosses her arms across her chest, smiling thin-lipped and knowing. There’s little respect in Grace’s posture now, insubordination written in the set of her shoulders and the straightness of her spine; Dani can feel it pouring off Grace like mist pours into the harbour when she goes to watch the sunrise over the Pacific some mornings with Diego. But if this is a standoff, Sarah’s not budging either.

Then to Dani, Grace says, “well done, Ranger. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

What ought to happen is Dani reaching out to Grace, taking her elbow in hand or slowing her before she can leave the room. There should be a chance to say something, anything, to defuse or address the discomfort of this situation – but Grace exits rapidly, in a way that recalls their first time sparring together. Her absence snaps into the room and leaves Dani behind.

* * *

“What was that about?” Dani complains. They’re moving so quickly that the air feels overly cool to her skin, still tingling from the rapid scrub-down she gave herself with a washcloth to get the worst of the sweat off her torso and arms. She'd needed to be quick; Sarah had waited impatiently, leaning against Dani's door. 

“All I’ll say is that you need to stay focused.”

“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,” Dani lies.

“Mm. Follow me. Be discreet.”

Sarah pulls without warning into a side-corridor, and Dani stumbles into course-correction.

As if discretion could ever be possible, following Sarah Connor. She draws regard and murmurs of acknowledgement like filings to a magnet. Not much taller than Dani, she nevertheless has a presence that Dani feels like she stumbles along in the wake of. Her legend and tragedy precedes her sharp as a knife, and Dani wonders how she can be so untouched.

They slip along nonetheless, and no one tries to stop them. Gradually, their trajectory becomes clear: the Jaeger bays… but one in the farthest corner, in a part of the Shatterdome that’s sparsely populated. With their proximity, Sarah’s pace slows. Rather than the elevator, Sarah takes them up the stairs – Dani’s legs protest, but she holds her tongue.

On the third floor, Sarah finally stops before a non-descript door and Dani takes a breather, letting her back fall against the cool relief of a nearby wall and stretch flat. Concrete grey, scuffed near the hinges; Sarah fumbles at her hip for a carabiner holding keys and an ID pass that’s clearly worse for wear.

“No maglocks here?” Dani asks, as Sarah scrapes a manual key into the lock.

“Not for this entrance,” Sarah returns from the corner of her mouth. “This bay never got upgraded. It was intended for visiting Jaegers, not storage.”

Dani thinks she knows where they are, now, why they’re here – and as Sarah reaches for and turns the handle Dani can see tiny scars peppering the back of Sarah’s aged hands, the skin lighter and strained more taut. Shrapnel, or burn marks.

“If any greasemonkeys are still hangin’ around,” Sarah hollers into the room ahead of her, making Dani jump, “take a coffee break!” 

“Just me!” A voice filters up to Dani’s ears, and Sarah half-turns. Her head jerks, a sharp little invitation, and Dani follows to let the door thud shut decisively behind her.

“Should I?”

“Leave it.” Going to the railing, Sarah rests her elbows and cranes her head forward. “Joel, the fuck? I told you I’d be coming by.”

“Exactly – and I’ve made sure everyone else left. And stayed gone.”

Dani gapes – because in front of her, larger than life, gleaming, restored, is the Cyclone Valkyrie.

From here, at this level, they’re around shoulder level – above her, partially concealed by the ceilings, is Valkyrie’s face, her Conn-Pod, attached to the main body as though her pilots are inside and ready for launch. The last time Dani saw her, she’d been gouged and hollow and silent from her final battle, rust trickling like blood from the joints and seized up limbs. Now, she’s… close to pristine. Rubber hoses dangle down around her face – those would be supply lines for applying various greases or protective finishes – and hydraulic platforms hover at various angles to show where workers had been tending to joints or armour plates. But with all of the equipment left behind so close to the Jaeger, Dani can tell no one expects her to be in active fighting condition. If she were on call, she’d be free from obstacles.

“Is she still doing well?” Sarah calls, settling in and adopting a more nonchalant pose.

“Ah, you know…” come the other voice, and Dani shakes herself loose, steps forward to join Sarah. “We need some more legacy parts for the refurb.”

“Send me the authorization note. I’ll sign off on it.”

“It’ll come out of your pay, you know.”

“As if I need _money_ ,” Sarah returns with distaste, just as Dani peers over the railing.

On a piece of scaffolding, jutting out one level beneath them, Joel appears in mechanic’s overalls – wiping his hands on a piece of chamois cloth, grinning up. The fluorescent lights draw glowing highlights on his shaved head, the cool-toned black of his skin.

“Shipping’s not cheap on those. You must really love this bucket of bolts.” Next to Dani, Sarah’s eyes narrow – and Dani winces in anticipation.

Instead of snapping out a retort, Sarah’s reply is dry, light as kindling: “Thought I was paying you for maintenance, not financial advice.”

“Technically,” he replies cheerfully, “you’re not the one paying me.” Joel shoves the cloth into a back pocket, tapping a two-fingered salute of greeting against his forehead. “Who’s this lovely lady?”

“The person I need to have a chat with,” Sarah interjects before Dani can say a word.

“I can take a hint. I’m pretty much done for the day anyways.” He waves again, one last brilliant smile shot in Dani’s direction. When he disappears from view, Sarah eases herself down onto the floor – kicks her legs out in the gap between the railing and the floor, to dangle over the edge. Dani lowers herself to a cross-legged seat beside her, taking a chance to stretch her lower back and hips as they wait. Faintly, they can hear Joel whistling as he locks up. Once the noises of movement below them have stopped and a door closes with an echoing bang, Sarah begins. 

“For private conversations, there aren’t places better than here.”

“You didn’t tell me the Valkyrie was around. I only knew about the active pilots’ Jaegers.”

“Mm.” Sarah tips her head back, scanning up the face of her Jaeger. Unreadable, she says, “well, like fuck I was going to let them decommission her. She’s all I’ve got left.” 

Dani doesn’t have a response for that.

“Tomorrow morning you’ll have a full mission briefing in your comms device,” Sarah says at last. “It’s encrypted, classified, and you’ll have to sign off on a non-disclosure before you can read it. But I’ll give you the highlights now, because the rumors are true. We’re going all out to try and destroy the Breach, once and for all. If we destroy the Breach, we win. If we don’t…” here, she grimaces, her mouth twisting in disgust. “Then K-Science enacts their backup plan. But by that point it’ll be too late.”

“We’re really doing it?” Dani’s heart thuds slowly in her ears, a soft drop in her stomach at Sarah’s words translating into a slight rush of adrenaline. “But I thought the Breach—”

“Exactly. We still don’t know how we’re going to enter it, or if we can. But,” at last Sarah looks over, “you’re going to be in the Jaeger guarding the payload. Nukes, delivered right to the source. The rift at the bottom of the Pacific. It’s a fucking stupid idea, but it’s what the PPDC agreed on, so we all say jump. K-Sci’s going to fill you in on _their_ plan tomorrow.”

By the end of the sentence, Sarah’s voice is shaking with anger – her hands knuckled up with emotion. Dani sees her fumbling for something in her pocket, removing a tiny flask from which she knocks back a healthy swallow.

“So that’s it,” Dani says, “they need me around to guard the Jaeger carrying the missile?”

“Not even sure it’s going to be a missile. But yeah. So when you hear Judgement Day, that’s what it’s referring to. Humanity’s judgment. Our last stand before we all start our slow march towards oblivion. That’s all that awaits us, when this nuke bounces off the Breach the same as all the others. Just be glad they put shielding in the Phoenix. You’re gonna need it, that close to the detonation.”

Absorbing that piece of news, delivered with bitter finality… Dani’s bothered, but not by what Sarah might expect. “Why bring me here to tell me this? Why not just wait for me to read it in the briefing?”

Sarah looks at Valkyrie’s face, towering just above them, held in profile by each level of scaffolding around her in this bay.

“You’re sharp. That’s not actually why I called you here. I needed to know we wouldn’t be overheard.”

“Is the Shatterdome… not safe?”

Sarah jerks, a little, like she’s shrugging something off. “Can’t say for sure. But there’s a lot of people I don’t trust, and you should watch your back too. Not everyone knows Judgment Day’s happening yet. The Marshal plans to announce it formally after your co-pilot is found.”

“My co-pilot.” Dani chews on the inside of one of her lips. “Sarah? What happens if the testing… you know, fails?”

“Fails? It can’t. That’s not an option. In a few days you’ll have the results from the matches. After that, neural handshake testing until it sticks. Take it from me.” The quality of her voice shifts, then, going blunt the way Dani’s heard when Sarah’s trying to mask an emotion. “We’ll find you another partner.”

“I don’t know if I want one.”

A strange thing, admitting that – Dani hasn’t uttered those words out loud to anyone. But if there’s anyone who’d understand, it’d be Sarah. She remembers both of them in the hallway outside Diego’s ICU room, glassy-eyed and numb, Dani reaching for Sarah’s hand because she didn’t know what else to do. And Sarah despite her shock accepted and returned that small comfort, pitiful though it was in the scope of her second shattering loss.

“You don’t. But,” and here Sarah stretches, arching her back until something in her spine pops before settling back into place, “they don’t give a shit about that. And if their plan goes the way they think it will, you’ll get a medal and a return trip home.”

“You don’t think things will go according to plan, though,” Dani prompts.

Sarah says nothing. Maybe she’s changed her mind about talking to Dani tonight, whatever it was she wanted to discuss. Dani’s about to get up, express thanks for the explanation and excuse herself to give Sarah some privacy with her ghosts, but then…

“How’s Grace?” Sarah asks, without looking over.

“Grace? She’s… fine,” Dani returns, grimacing already at the understatement of the century.

“That’s it?”

“She’s a good teacher. We’re getting along well, even if we got off on the wrong foot. But part of that was my fault – I overreacted. I misread her.”

Sarah nods, again, and Dani wonders if that response is what she was looking for – guiltily, starts to wonder if she’s about to be reprimanded for something.

“Has Grace told you where she’s from, yet?”

A sudden, chill prickle down her spine. “No. why?”

From her casual tone, Sarah might be discussing her plans for the weekend.

"A year after John died, and the inquiry… that’s when Razorback hit Portland. Absolute devastation. Half the city got wiped out before two Jaeger teams took it down, though this time _none_ of the pilots survived. Around the same time, Grace Harper shows up in Seattle, trying to get recruited for the Ranger program. She’s an ideal candidate. Has one of the most impressive auditions they’ve seen to date. Things’re looking great… except when they try to run her background check.”

“What was strange about it?”

“No records on her.”

“…None?”

“Not a one. They run it again. Same results. Grace Harper might as well not exist before the year 2020, although someone matching her description showed up in a hospital in Vancouver, Canada. When those details came to light, she didn’t wait for the formal rejection; she withdrew _herself_ from consideration.”

“Wait… so how did she end up here?”

Sarah ignores her at first, and Dani reminds herself to be patient. “After Razorback were the attacks on Anchorage, Lima, Manila… the timelines were changing too, by then, from 8 months between Kaiju to 6 months. Then 3. Now we’re down to a matter of weeks, if that… so with funding gone to the Wall of Life, central had no reason or resources to pursue that blip. Just another failed pilot, a weird outlier in a program rendered obsolete. Grace drops out of sight again when Seattle’s training program shuts down.” Sarah leans over, and Dani is rattled by the intensity in her gaze. “Except for now she’s back. Handpicked in L.A. because she was a known variable in the system as much as anything else. And she knew what the Breach mission was called before you did. Which she had no business knowing.”

“So what are you saying?” Dani presses, a lump rising in her throat.

“I’m saying…” and Sarah shakes her head ruefully. “Be careful. Somewhere, somehow, there’s a leak. There’s only one real way that anyone could know what’s going on inside Grace’s head, or who she is – and she’s not qualified for it.” 

It’s enough. First mission briefings shared outside of protocol, now this… conspiracy, or warning, whatever this is! Dani stands – says something, not that she’s paying too close of attention to what her mumbled excuses are – and goes to leave the room. Only once does she glance over her shoulder, to see whether Sarah’s reacting. The other woman still sits, legs dangling out of sight as though Sarah’s been cut off at the knees, staring not at Dani but at the towering, silent Jaeger in front of her.

“Leave it unlocked,” Sarah says. “I’ll close up when I’m done.”

Dani lets the door shut behind her, bracing back against it with her eyes squeezed shut and her thoughts racing.

 _You didn’t tell me I’d be working with_ her!

What Sarah’s insinuated _burns_ Dani. Not because Sarah misunderstood anything, but because she read Dani so easily... and is warning her off before she gets too invested. 

Well, too late. There's something in the way that Grace has treated her that makes Dani feel _known_ , and in this circumstance that might be a liability. Might be why Dani's been so resistant to the idea of a new drift partner, of needing to fight and be evaluated on the basis of her interactions with strangers. And now, to hear that Grace maybe shouldn't be trusted..? In her mind, Dani rolls around the reaction Grace’d had to her – she’d thought it was contempt, but in this moment Dani thinks it might have been astonishment. Maybe even relief. As though Dani had been lost, and now was found.

Which makes no sense.

Sarah’s right. There’s only one person with an explanation.

The Shatterdome has a directory. Dani calls it up, finds the room she’s looking for – a non-descript chamber, in the secondary living quarters, far away from the more luxurious rooms afforded to all officers and techies and Rangers and cadets. Nestled on the outskirts of the Engineering quarters, somewhere in no-man’s land for anyone with a formal job title but without any prestige.

Dani arrives around the dinner call, as the last trickles of people head to the dining hall with their IDs. She hesitates for a moment to check that the coast is clear before drawing her fist up and back – _bang, bang bang!_ She knocks resoundingly against the door, the reverberations on impact travelling up through her forearm. Only then does Dani consider her flyaway hair, the fact that she practically ran here and hasn’t showered yet; but then, the heavy metal door starts to creak open.

“I need to talk to you,” she blurts before she can quite see the room occupant fully, and waits for Grace’s reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More than a month to this update - but with everything going on in the news, I hope the delay is understandable. Black lives matter, now and always, and I've had many personal things to attend to. However, I hope this chapter is worth the wait.  
> A special shoutout to my friend agendermetalbender, who weighed in with superb worldbuilding detail when I asked the question "how exactly would you rust-proof a Jaeger considering all the saltwater they work around and in?" They gave me a _stupendous_ response, and some of the details of that convo are represented here in the work Diego does.  
> Thank you for your patience and readership! I hope that you're safe and keeping well.


	5. AWOL

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight editorial correction: Sarah says at the end of the previous chapter that Razorback, one of many Kaiju OCs I’ve invented, attacks San Francisco in 2021. I’ve corrected myself by changing that to Portland, in order to keep a detail from Pacific Rim canon that the first attack in 2013 created the San Francisco Exclusionary Zone. I needed to retain that bit of canon for **air-horn noises** ...reasons.

Grace is arresting – her eyes as wide as the first time Dani saw her face. She’s changed out of the clothes she’d worn earlier, wears a plain white tee tucked partly into some slouchy jeans that are worn in gently at the knees. _Oh._

“Dani?” Grace gradually leans against the curved door frame.

“I need to talk to you,” Dani repeats, a reminder to herself of why she came here as much as anything. “I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow.”

“Well, uh… okay.” Grace slips a hand into her pocket and crosses one ankle over the other, looking at ease even though Dani knows she must’ve been caught off guard. Behind her, Dani can see into the room: A sizeable cot bed, same as all the rest in the living quarters, with the sheets thrown back and a set of heavy boots resting next to it on the floor. A series of maps pinned up to the wall, the edges slightly curled and overlapped in places by sticky notes with untidy scrawling across them, illegible at this distance. Barely visible at the corner of her desk there’s what looks to be a disassembled handheld – an articulated magnifying glass hovers over it.

“I’d invite you in,” Grace breaks into her thoughts, “but you can see I wasn’t prepared for visitors.”

“Oh! No. Somewhere else.”

The docks? No, they’re monitored in shifts, and without Diego around to validate her presence Dani would feel like an intruder. Her room? But people will _definitely_ notice, and that’s the last kind of rumour she needs floating around right now. The mess hall is too public…

Grace looks back into her room for a moment, seeming lost in thought, and decisively slaps a hand against the doorframe.

“Do you wanna get your coat?”

Dani blinks. “You’ve got an idea?” 

“Yeah,” Grace says, ducking partly out of view only to turn up again with a leather bomber jacket in hand. She starts shrugging it on, saying, “knowing you, you probably haven’t eaten yet – or left the Shatterdome since you got here. There’s a killer place in the city.”

“We’re allowed to go there without leave?” Dani ponders absently, as Grace tugs the front of the jacket smooth and adjusts the collar. Her sparring partner just stares at her.

“Has anyone told you that you _can’t_?”

“I… no, but…”

“Then there’s no problem. If anyone asks later,” Grace says gently, “you were exactly where you were supposed to be – with me. Tell them it was extra training.”

“Training for what?”

“Situational awareness? I dunno, we’ll come up with something. Or just tell them the truth: you were getting dinner.”

“What kind of a place did you have in mind?”

No response but a grin.

It had never occurred to Dani that she could just… walk out the personnel door, following Grace’s lead and nodding at the security booth on the way out. A short walk in the cool twilight leads to the shuttle station; Grace gives the driver some directions, and Dani finds herself compulsively patting the pocket in her cargo pants where she’s holding her ID card to confirm for herself that she’ll be able to get back. With the assurance of someone who’s done this many times, Grace transfers them from the shuttle to a train station. The light rail skims along, so smoothly Dani could forget that they were in transport – out the windows, she sees the tangle of Hong Kong harbour laid out around them. Gold and silver lights, spread out in arrays before her that reflect a diffused glow across the low-hanging clouds skimming in over the bay. Distant, slow-blinking stars on the water indicate the presence of fishing boats or shellfish farmers or Kaiju patrols. The Shatterdome comparatively is dim, as though aware that too many beacons would announce its presence more easily to an encroaching Kaiju from the seaward side.

“It’s beautiful,” Dani murmurs.

Grace, sitting diagonally across from Dani with her feet kicked up on the seat, puts her arms up behind her head. “In a lot of ways.”

The industrial area that the Shatterdome is housed in gives way gradually, building after building, to smaller businesses and towering apartment complexes. Then, after that, to more urban buildings – skyscrapers, a historical district. A few late-working people sharing the car with them trickle out, taking with them backpacks or grocery bags. Still, their presence is enough that Dani elects for silence. She redoes her braid. Grace closes her eyes, and her face at rest looks so much younger. All the while, the sun dips lower on the horizon, until buildings block the view. Dani regrets that. In the shade of skyscrapers, all she can perceive are occasional slices of colour: deep indigo at the top, fading through a powdery rust-orange and aching gold behind the city’s skyline. Interposed are flashes of windows, glowing from inside; snatches of graffiti, decorative or political, across the concrete siding of complexes. A faintly peeling full-size mural depicts a stylized Kaiju, falling before the lightning-lashed whip of a Jaeger whose image is weather-torn and faded. Dani closes her eyes, letting the fluid dip and rise of the light rail on its tracks lull her. The train’s intercom chimes at each stop, along with the station name in Cantonese, then English. Around her, Dani can hear more people exiting and entering the train car; an increase in chatter suggests that they’re coming to a more active section of the line.

“This is us,” Grace says at last, and Dani opens her eyes once more to see Grace already standing. When the doors open with their soft melodic _bong,_ a rush of people pour in – Grace, without missing a beat, seizes Dani’s hand up in her own. Feeling a blush rise to her face, Dani lets herself be pulled along to a clear spot in the crowd – and when Grace stops, Dani pulls her hand loose perhaps a second too late.

But the scene before her completely overtakes her.

The platform rises up, a harbour elevated just above the busy district they’ve arrived in. Overhead, there are neon signs and apartment windows flung open to the air or holding air-conditioning units in place like an ice-cube clenched between teeth. At the same level, Dani can see sporadic pedestrian overpasses – and below, cars parked along buildings, street food vendors slinging orders to waiting customers, cyclists weaving on their bikes like ribbons between slow-shuffling people. The impression is staggering – red, gold, neon blue, pink, lanterns, banners, clouds of steam, music! And in the close distance, over the shorter buildings: the telltale curved ribcage of Reckoner, the Kaiju corpse whose remains house the Bone Slums. They must be only a mile or so away.

“Oh,” Dani breathes. “I’ve only ever seen this in pictures…” 

“Come on,” Grace gestures, seeming pleased, and Dani follows obligingly.

Down some stairs, across the street – now the smells hit her, and Dani realizes how _hungry_ she is. They pass by hawkers selling roasting meats, sweet potatoes fished out from charcoal braziers, rattling chestnuts swirled around in a wok. Dani watches fish balls being transferred by a wire spider into fragrant curry sauce and lifted out, dripping, into Styrofoam containers. Eggplants, peppers, and soft squares of what look like tofu – stuffed with something Dani can’t make out – being fried and parcelled out. The scent of smoke, caramelizing sugar, and countless savory dishes envelops her, and Dani feels drawn to them – but Grace keeps going. At a corner, at last, Grace stops and holds a door open to a tiny shop with a few tables and a counter, behind which she can see some chefs ladling broth.

“I think you’ll like this,” Grace says, then says something in Cantonese to the shopkeepers.

“What did you order?”

“The wonton noodles. Shrimp in the wontons; broth’s lighter, but it’s filling. This is my favourite place to come at night when I need to get some space. On the way back we’ll get some other dishes from a few vendors I want to see… what’s wrong?”

Dani, stricken, keeps patting her other pockets as though she’s made a mistake. “I didn’t bring my scrip-!”

But Grace turns, putting some crumpled bills and a few coins down near the register. “It’s fine. I’ve got this for you. Wanna pick a table?”

The bowls arrive with a thin noodle piled on top of a spoon, with a few tender wontons scattered throughout the broth, and some garlic-scented chive sliced at a diagonal and sprinkled over the top. The wontons are soft, and the noodles toothsome – Dani’s eaten a third of her bowl before she realizes. When next her attention pans up from the meal in front of her, she sees Grace – chin propped up on her hand, eyes soft and a slight smile on her mouth. “I thought you might like these.”

“How did you find this place?”

“Food’s important to me. I don’t think it’s something that should be taken for granted.” Grace lowers her face and chopsticks to the bowl for a moment, and then speaks around a mouth full of noodles. “Good?”

When Dani nods, Grace continues. “So. What did you need to talk about?” 

All of the momentum that spurred her on impulsively to Grace’s room has waned. Although the series of questions in her mind had been self-evident, Dani finds on review that they feel… maybe less risky now than they did in the Shatterdome on an empty stomach. Maybe it’s the change of scenery; or the way being around Grace makes her feel calmer. 

Start with the basics.

“Why did you react that way to me? When we first met.”

A strange moment of assembly happens, where Dani feels as though she can _see_ Grace constructing her answer before she gives it. “Where I’m from, there are people who… know about you. Idolize you. What you represent means a lot.”

“Oh?” Dani returns her attention to the soup, picking up a long noodle with her chopsticks. “What do I represent?”

“Hope.”

She almost chokes on the broth.

“I’m nothing,” Dani rushes to say, “I’m nobody—” but Grace is shaking her head.

“People needed to see that the Jaeger project is for everyone – even though we know it wasn’t, not really. It wasn’t equally made, and certain countries get more say than others. You were this… reminder, to so many of us.” Her eyes are so blue, and something in Grace’s voice is so vehement and genuine it catches Dani completely off-balance. “I think people are harder on you than you deserve. You got thrown in with inadequate preparation, and then scapegoated when something happened that was completely out of your control. Whether you made mistakes or not, it was wrong of them. When I saw you, here, I guess… I was angry that they’d managed to drag you back in. I’d hoped you’d gotten away from this.” 

“I don’t think I could have said no,” Dani responds slowly, “I don’t think I could have forgiven myself if I did.”

Another rueful smile. “That also seems like you. From what I’ve heard, I mean.”

“Sarah finally told me what they needed me for.”

A momentary pause, then Grace resumes shoving noodles into her mouth. “How do you feel about that?”

“It’s a smaller role. I think that’s a relief, that all I have to do is hold the line. I think I can do that – that I will be ready this time. But she also told me something about you.”

“And what’s that?”

Dani swallows. “Why you couldn’t be a Ranger.”

Grace, draining the last of her soup in one go – how did she eat it so quickly? – lets her utensils clatter into the empty bowl and leans back in her chair. “Let me guess. My blank slate, right?”

Dani nods, and Grace rolls her eyes.

“Isn’t there something to be said about the simplest explanation? Oscar’s Razor or whatever? That wasn’t a judgement on you,” Grace continues quickly. “You’ve been slammed with info since day one, right? But plenty of people love a conspiracy, and Sarah Connor’s got a reputation for jumping to conclusions when she could just _ask_. S’one of the things that annoys me most about her.”

On another occasion, Dani thinks, she’ll dig into why Grace butts heads with Sarah so much. “Are you willing to explain to me?”

“As far as why I don’t exist? Simple. My birth certificate got lost when Trespasser took out half of San Fran in 2013. You’ve seen footage of the Exclusionary Zone; there’s nothing left between the Kaiju Blue and the nukes. Vital Records offices got taken out. Everything stored on paper or local servers, gone in the fires or fried by the EMPs. My dad worked in tech, so I learned to keep my digital footprint clean. Didn’t serve me well – the Corps couldn’t tell me apart from other Americans named Grace Harper in an airtight way, and they told me that jeopardized my chances.”

“Oh.” In the depths of her bowl, Dani can see a small distorted reflection of the look on her face – embarrassed, a little, because she was expecting something more mysterious. Instead, it seems Grace is just a ghost in the system. She takes a few more bites, before casting a sheepish glance up. “So you withdrew…”

“Because the alternative was agreeing to closer scrutiny and hearing ‘no’ at the end of all that anyways. Better to bow out than have a black mark on my record. Turns out that was more a premonition than anything; I don’t know how many people got furloughed not long after that.” 

“I’m sorry for prying,” Dani starts, but Grace shakes her head emphatically.

“I volunteered all of that. It’s fine.” Her mouth angles up. “Satisfactory?”

Dani feels a flutter low in her stomach, but it has nothing to do with hunger. “It was incredible, thank you.”

“You let me know when you want to head back.” Grace ruffles her hair, shoves her hands inside her jacket pockets and scrapes her chair backwards with just her hips. She holds the door open for Dani, her arm held high overhead to keep it ajar while Dani walks underneath.

“We might as well explore now that we’ve come all this way, right?”

Dani’s rewarded with another one of Grace’s grins. Behave. This is just to lighten the heavy mood, give them a chance to not have Grace's revelations set the tone for the rest of the evening. Besides - who wants this outing to take on the tone of an interrogation? It's a _conversation._ That's all. God, she can hear Diego now. He’s going to tell her this was a date, and she’s going to have to whack him on the arm and swear him to secrecy, or else his whole department will know by Monday.

By this time it’s fully night, and Grace slopes along easily beside her. They stick to the middle of the street, walking past lineups for various stalls. An entrance to a public anti-Kaiju bunker, incongruously, sandwiched between what looks like a liquor outlet and a cheerful store in candy-bright colours. As they walk by, Dani peers into the display window; it’s packed full of gatchapon holding chibi Kaiju keychains; a stack of model Jaeger kits; t-shirts displaying the names of popular piloting teams, some of them long-retired. Dani didn’t realize stores like that still existed, and there’s a low twist of discomfort in her stomach. People will be people… Someone at a booth selling cellphones and accessories catches her staring and tries to get her attention, so she turns quickly away and re-engages Grace.

“Tell me what you like about coming here.”

Grace lifts an eyebrow. “That one’s easy: the food.” Then she winks. “Uh… I need the space sometimes, to walk. Be outside in the air. The Shatterdome’s fine, but it’s not – it doesn’t exactly make me feel free.”

“I can feel that, too. And I like how vibrant everything is – how alive! I think that’s something I’ve needed.” Dani hesitates, then bumps Grace’s arm with her elbow for a second. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

Is it just Dani, or does Grace’s reply sound a little hoarse? “Don’t mention it. If you really want to pay me back, you can get dinner the next time we come out.”

Daring to tease back, aware that it pushes the conversation towards more delicate territory, Dani says, “Then we’d _really_ be giving people something to talk about, wouldn’t we?”

“I’m used to it–” Grace catches herself, a flash of annoyance on her face. Dani can feel her own enthusiasm flicker, like a sudden surge or ebb in electricity.

“Oh?”

Another one of those strange moments, like earlier, where Grace’s response is built with care. “In another life, I was with someone. Circumstances should have been self-explanatory, but – people sometimes read things into relationships that aren’t fair.”

“Were you okay? Together?”

“For a while.” A rueful little smile appears. “She’s probably pissed at me, but I can’t talk to her about it.”

 _She._ Oh, Dani feels a little regret for bringing up what’s clearly another painful subject but – _she._

“At any rate,” Grace is saying, “I’ve done my best to just… do what I need to right now. Sometimes you can’t fix things, and you move on.”

When Dani tips her head back, hair cascading down the back of her jacket, she can see the cloud-cover overhead – and off to one side, the soot-smudged arc of a massive rib-bone, long-since stripped of all flesh. They’ve walked far enough to reach the fringes of the Bone Slum, and around a corner Dani can hear chimes, the thin haunting warble of a bone flute. Practitioners of BuenaKai must be nearby.

“You know… I think a lot about places like this. What they prove.”

“And what’s that?”

“That people find a way to live. Even among horrible things and terrible times. We build up and around, or we rebuild.”

“Do you ever worry about what happens if the backup plan leads to something worse?”

Dani thinks about that for a moment.

“Of course,” she hears herself saying, “I think that’s always possible. And I think it’s important to understand why worse things rise up, so you can fight them if needed. But you know what happened to me, to my brother. I thought we’d lost everything – including the purpose and the hope we’d just found together in the Drift. But we’re still here, trying to do better, even if sometimes all I am is… afraid of not being good enough. I can’t pretend to know what you’ve gone through, but the fact that you’re here, willing to teach me, I think these things are true of you too.” As though there’s a change in the quality of air, she turns towards Grace. Catching the expression on her face, Dani falters. “What is it?”

“Nothing. You remind me of her. That’s all. It’s a good thing.”

Now Dani has to look at the ground. “We should probably head back,” she says quickly, but then–

At her feet, something catches her eye. It’s an advertisement. A flyer, really, the kind of poster that would be handed out on street corners or plastered to a community board. A short paragraph has been translated over and over in different languages, including Spanish; when she tips the page back and forth in the glow of the streetlight, there’s a barely perceptible holographic mark emblazoned behind the lettering. Blue-green and iridescent, it has teeth, and curving horns, and is _very_ clearly a simplified rendering of Reckoner’s skull. 

_A Kaiju Cure for what ails you. Curiosities and curations harvested fresh and kept in prime condition for many purposes, personal, spiritual, or scientific – simply follow the mark of Hannibal Chau!_

“Does this say what I think it does?!” Dani turns the sheet towards Grace, who skims it quickly.

“Uh… yeah. There’s a black market. You can get everything from bone powder to live skin mites, or so I hear. Entrails. Preserved organs. The authorities don’t shut it down because… well, K-Science needs to get things sourced from somewhere, and these guys have harvesting and extraction down to an art. Works for everyone involved even if they’re not on the best of terms. Chau’s an American ex-pat so… you see his advertising style.”

“Do you think if the Kaiju knew we were turning them into skin creams, they’d be more likely to destroy the world? Or less?” Dani mutters, and hears a little hiccup of laughter from Grace. They make eye contact.

Like a feedback loop, in the face of absurdity beneath the shadow of Kaiju remains, laughter bubbles up between them. It continues until Dani is doubled over, leaning on Grace for support. She’s warm.

At last, with Grace’s arm slung across her shoulders, they turn for home.

* * *

On the train back, later than Dani expected – they stopped at a patisserie for buns, and at another stall for some Buddha’s Delight in a small takeout container – Grace goes inwards once more. In the fluorescent lights, Dani can see the dark circles etched under her eyes; the prominence of her cheekbones and fine-toned muscle along her arms. Her jacket rests, slumped and forgotten, over her knees.

This time, though, they’re sitting beside each other. 

Dani closes her eyes, letting darkness drop across her vision. She can sense bright lights above her; feels the hum of the maglev accelerators beneath their feet. The air is cool, filtered; and beside her, Grace like a beacon. Moving towards that presence is as natural as a flower, tilting to face the sun. 

Sleepiness is easy to feign; Dani lets her head drop onto Grace’s shoulder. The woman twitches, a little, but doesn’t jerk away. 

The leather of Grace’s jacket creaks against Dani’s, when she adjusts how her arm lies along Dani’s back. Rather than create distance, she shifts to hold Dani in closer, more comfortably.

It’s difficult to breathe shallow and steady, as in true rest, but Dani keeps her face relaxed; impossible, though, not to hum a small happy sound. The sound and feel, rise and fall, of Grace’s breathing resumes next to Dani, soft as waves rolling in along a shoreline. 

And that’s all there is, for a time. The space they’ve made together, all the more precious because it’s liminal. 

Dani wants to resist leaving it, when they arrive back at the stop where Grace has already pinged a shuttle. In the end, though, Grace gently nudges her back into herself. Murmurs, “we’re here,” and lets Dani lead the way off the train.

“Thanks again,” Dani says as they part ways in the echoing, night-empty space of the Shatterdome’s entrance. 

“Don’t mention it,” Grace says, with a strange, wistful quirk of the mouth. Dani wishes the phrase could be taken figuratively. 

* * *

The day has left her feeling slightly sticky and bone-tired. Dani stands under a midnight shower back in her room, her face directly under the spray with her head held back. The water runs over her brow, along the eyelids and down her cheeks. She scrubs at her face, massages from the temples down along the jaw. Lets her fingers linger, for a moment, at her mouth. Catching herself, soaping down in rapid self-denial. 

Already the evening grows muted, the lingering impression as smeared and glowing as Ghost-Drifting. Like when she and Diego would stumble from a Conn-Pod Simulation, walking and speaking almost in tandem for hours after the neural bridge was uncoupled. Dani can recall images and sounds, though she's also wishing already for a repeat… 

She’s still thinking about it, lying under her sheets, hair dried and combed and loose for sleep. Dani turns against the sheets, clutches a pillow to her chest and curls around it. Wonders what Grace is thinking about right now. Whether she’s also already going over the things said and done, imagining where it could lead. As if things were that simple. As if things _could_ be that simple. 

A rule: to not let yourself imagine past the boundaries of what is known. 

Judgment Day looming like a hurricane on the horizon. 

More immediate matters before that arrives. 

But for the first time in years Dani indulges in dreaming. It’s just that, after all. The last thing she thinks of before sleep rolls over her is a desert, bursting with bright orange and yellow and violet blooms, defiant yet reliant on the thunderstorms scudding overhead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, whispering periodically under my breath: _Dani, that's gay_.  
> I've delighted myself with how quickly this chapter came together - some breathing room for them, and I hope you enjoy! More soon, I hope. Until then, and as always, thank you _SO MUCH_ for reading.


	6. K-Science

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings this chapter for implied alcohol dependency, as much of it takes place from Sarah’s POV.

Sarah can’t sleep.

Typical.

Hours spent sitting in Valkyrie’s bay, and she’s no more inclined to move than she was earlier. Next time she does this, she’ll either have to bring something stronger or make it last longer. Either way, she’s laid herself out flat on her back; better than risking blood pooling in her legs and feet later from sitting over the ledge the way she’d been. Sarah considers herself now intimately acquainted with the fine details of the concrete overhead, blocking her view of the bay’s ceiling. There’s no reason tonight, that she can figure out or interrogate. Just insomnia. Another random bout of it. 

“If we could go hunting like we used to, do you think that’d make a difference? Help me rest easy?”

The words, too loud, tumble uneven from her mouth and ricochet around the room. Addressing the Jaeger garners no response.

“’Course not. Wouldn’t do anything for me. I used to think that fragging Kaiju would save Kyle. From the second the first one made landfall, he was a goner. How was I supposed to explain that kind of fixation to John, though? He was just a kid. And then the two’ve us, we were going to make Kyle’s death mean something.”

Sarah heaves herself up to a seated posture, then decides that was a mistake. She drops her head between her arms, smelling the cool metal-and-concrete around her and staring at the chipped flooring visible between her knees. She’s buzzed. Head heavy, needing counterbalance.

When she squeezes her eyes shut it summons up Kyle at 3 am, staring out the bedroom window. Refusing to talk about what he’d signed up for in the experimental Drift labs, what they were trying to develop. _Go back to sleep, honey, everything’s fine._ Or sitting in the bathtub with his teeth chattering and bloodshot eyes unfocused, claiming he could see the world burning already. Every word of comfort she’d tried fell on someone who couldn’t hear her. She’d thought a literal interpretation of sharing the load would help. Instead, it just made his nightmares hers, a synchronized scream in the dark. Then, she passed those on to their son. Gave her an edge in combat, that much was for sure, but also ruined her.

“Why am I doing this, huh?”

Her Jaeger, an un-place where both her husband and son had died in turn. The only place she had left to remember them in. A portable tomb.

“Have any other pilots lost partners and come back for more? Nope! I’m the only lonely asshole on that front. Until Dani.”

With a rattling sigh, Sarah pulls her carcass to its feet. Stares up at the indifferent, tinted eyes gleaming down at her.

“Why are we only worried about the Kaiju? You Jaegers eat us alive too!”

It gives her no small satisfaction, plunging the area into darkness. The door locks behind her with a final, definitive _snick_. She stands there, shoulders bowed. Reluctantly, on auto-pilot, she glances at her handheld. Debates, a moment.

She’s got no more excuses or reasons to put off a little incursion. Some recon. Dean wasn’t specific in how or when she was meant to keep an eye on the Kaiju groupies. For the last week or so she’s avoided the objective out of spite. Boredom and irritation are what compel her now to make her move; that, and no one’s around to bother her right now. If Dean didn’t want her to choose her own methods, he shouldn’t have given her entry codes. She’ll snoop around the K-Science area for a while and exit after snapping some photos on her handheld for evidence – why take anything with you when you can just record it?

So – however grudgingly – Sarah tromps her way through the darkened hallways of the Shatterdome. This time of night, it feels more like hers.

She _doesn’t_ forget to latch the door behind her. That’s how she’d end up with no warning, no escape route, if anyone were to follow her in.

It’s her bad luck that she picked the entrance closest to the specimen holding tanks – the place is a horror show. Huge, cylindrical, they tower around her in the room for the largest Kaiju bits – of which there are many. That’s what you get when a bunch of scientists are given free rein in a wet lab and some black market dollars. The tanks give off the only source of light, and the effect is disturbing, wavering. Like being trapped in a nightmarish aquarium exhibit. Streams of bubbles rise through the greenish-yellow liquid; the same hue is matched in the eerie, bright reflections cast across the floor. Contained within are organs that she doesn’t care to guess the purpose of, suspended.

One scan around the room too many and she swears a tentacle dangling from one specimen lurches up and towards her, suckering against the glass with severed veins gaping.

Sarah curses, stumbling backwards and almost tripping herself on the huge coiling tubes and cables snaking across the floor - but when she takes a reflexive second look, it seems more like the circulation system of the tank doing its thing. Making the tentacles dance.

“Fucking find something useful and get out of here,” and she doesn’t at all care for how her voice seems to echo.

It’s not even that she plans to disclose findings from tonight to Dean, necessarily. More that she wants a leg up, a card up her sleeve. Silent, measured steps through the lab carry her from the wet lab towards the dry side. Further on down she can see shadowy, slumbering banks of computers. They’re kept well and thoroughly away from potential splash zones; for now, she’s in the intermediate space. Workspaces with half-hearted partitions between them only reinforce Sarah’s growing impression of the room: one of barely contained chaos, the researchers here clearly more focused on output quantity than tidiness.

She begins a tally: whiteboards of scrawled, illegible notes. Walls of task post-its, some of them with content crossed out or annotated with further post-its. Printouts as far as the eye can see, littering every surface. Sporadic family photos, low-light plants under purple-hued portable grow lamps, and miniatures of Kaiju or Jaegers complete the effect. Someone has left a half-drunk cup of milky coffee out, and Sarah wrinkles her nose. Knowing these guys, one of them is going to heat it up tomorrow and finish it anyways. A scramble space has been set up with yoga balls and backless chairs in front of a prominent set of whiteboards on rollers, and she decides to start a formal investigation there. It is, after all, closest to Carl and Gabriel’s desks. She remembers that much from the grand tour.

A flicker of movement, seen out of the corner of her eye.

She whips around –

Nothing.

Just a stream of bubbles unfurling upwards in a tank, back the way she came, the organ inside motionless. Somewhere in the walls, a generator kicks on with a low rumbling hum. Its noise complements the sound of fluid circulating.

Sarah scuffs a hand through her hair, suppressing a delayed-response shudder trying to work through her system. 

There’s gotta be something here, somewhere. She’ll hit up the closer of the desks in front of her. Even without formal confirmation, this one _has_ to be Kündigen’s. Got a picture of his wife and her kid on the desk, along with a stupid bobble-headed dog decoration. She switches on the desk lamp, casting a pool of golden light across the surface and sharpening the shadows around her into blades. The paperwork across the top of his desk is neatly clipped and fanned out in an orderly way, and there’s a stack of papers centre-left of the monitor. Something-something review scrawled in a page sticking out of the notebook lying closed next to the keyboard. Gingerly, she pulls it out part way – but even taking her addled state into account, the phrases that become visible are pure techno-gibberish. The stack, then.

_Functional Specifications of the Legion Project—_

Friggin’ bingo.

She flips past incomprehensible pages: complicated diagrams with acronyms she’s got no idea how to parse; endless charts with input-objective-output labels; sections and subsections of code. When Sarah gets to section 12.8.5.6.2, she gives up and starts looking for a summary. There has to be one of those, right? And there is. Eventually. It takes a few moments to upload image captures of the document’s detailed summary pages into her handheld, but she manages. As she does so, she skim-reads… and the crawling, cold feeling along her flesh doesn’t lessen. Quite the opposite.

_… to learn from what the Hive Mind implies and integrate those findings into our systems offensively …_

_… derived from previous research, current non-human testing rounds show promise…_

_… synchronized neural load distribution to on-shore pilot supports …_

_… future applications could include cross-Jaeger neural load redistribution, responsive weapons feedback loops, or instantaneous communication channels…_

_… investigating a possible biological component—_

“You _motherfuckers_.”

Sarah dumps the papers back down onto the desk in approximately the same place, now past caring whether she leaves traces behind of her passing.

Her son is dead. Countless other human lives, lost. And years later, even before they got reinstated, all these fuckers could think about was how to make humans more like the Kaiju.

* * *

Getting back to the hallway happens, somehow. The dark grasps at her, clinging to her. Presumably she’s locked things up. At any rate, there are no ghosts just outside of her field of vision anymore, so maybe the coast is clear.

Sarah takes a minute to steady herself outside, again, seeking to blunt the ragged edge of her breath and calm down her thudding heart.

When she’s able, she straightens up and takes off, again. This time, she’ll go back to her quarters. Either she’ll knock herself out for a few hours with some chemical intervention – she’s feeling damnably sober – or she’ll pore over what she’s captured in images and try to make sense of them. It’s not like pulling together a report for Dean will be difficult. She’ll fortify herself throughout the morning before accompanying Dani to the meeting with K-Science. Won’t that be a laugh? Trying to read whether they’ve noticed anything out of place or not.

Sarah rounds the corner, exiting the K-Sci area.

Collides with someone and bounces off, careening to the side.

Her instinct after stumbling is to whip around with a fist raised. The figure grunts in surprise, seems to smear around the edges –

Sarah’s pushed back, staggeringly fast. Pinned back to the nearest wall, with a hand firmly covering her mouth.

The figure before her, holding her immobile, is Grace Harper.

In the dull lights of the Shatterdome at night, the fierce blue of Grace’s widened eyes is almost luminous, sparking for a moment as though she’s being lit from within. Then Sarah blinks, and the impression is gone like the imprint of light after staring at a candle.

Breathing heavily, Grace looks up and down the corridor. There’s almost unnatural heat being thrown off of her, and she smells faintly of fryer oil and smoke and leather. She’s wearing a jacket. Her ID dangles from a lanyard at her waist.

“What the fuck, Connor?” She hisses, lifting her hand from Sarah’s mouth slowly.

“Get _off_.”

Grace releases her, raising her pinioning arm from Sarah’s chest and stepping back in a single fluid motion; Sarah helps her along with a shove. To rebalance herself, Sarah braces for a second against the wall behind her; then, she’s taking a step forward with an upswell of defensive fury inside her.

“The fuck are _you_ doing here?”

Recovering with a curious look on her face and a firm set to her brow, Grace doesn’t concede more ground than she already has.

“I could ask you the same,” she says, glancing back the way Sarah had come from for a moment. “K-Science? At one in the morning?”

“And you went off base.”

Neither of them moves for a long moment. Finally, Grace rolls her eyes, reaching into her jacket. Sarah flinches – until Grace pulls out a small, grease-spattered paper pouch.

“Here.”

“What’s that?”

“Fried chestnuts. I headed into the city to get some food. I was saving these for snacks.” She rolls her eyes again. “What? You can’t tell me that you prefer living in a box. I had to get out for a little bit. Besides… you seem like you need something else in your stomach.”

When Sarah doesn’t take any, Grace shrugs and pops a couple into her mouth. Speaking around them while chewing: “So you’ve just made this a haunt of yours, then?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Sarah mutters, moving to push around Grace.

“The fact that you’re not making a lot of noise means you don’t want anyone to find you.”

Sarah’s not going to respond. Just keep moving.

“This about Legion?”

She stops dead in her tracks.

As Sarah rotates on her heel to face Grace, that weird trick of the light happens again – the eyeshine.

Five years of this kind of shit. Seeing things that aren’t there.

To shake it off, she starts in on Grace: “You know about Legion too? Sure seems like a habit of yours, knowing things that you shouldn’t—”

“Any employee with their ear to the ground has at this point. Spend more time in the common areas with other officers, you would as well.” Uncharacteristically inert, Grace sighs and unfolds her arms, tapping the bag of fried chestnuts against her thigh for a moment. Her next words are clipped. “Look. I want to stop it.”

Sarah folds her arms across her chest, reflexively, daring her own face to give away a shred of the surprise she feels.

“Why’s that?”

“It’s the wrong direction to go in. The Wall failed. All our attempts to close the Breach fail. What happens after this next attempt needs to be… something else. No one wants to hear that the Jaeger program declined because humanity can’t afford to keep it going, resource-wise. All that supporting Legion’s gonna do is kick the can down the road; if we can’t stop the Kaiju at the source, they’ll –”

Grace seems to catch herself, and restarts. “Then signs point to things getting worse. The acceleration of attacks is one thing. A double, triple, or crowd event would be another. Rebuilding the Jaegers, even enhancing them, will take time and resources we don’t have.”

Sarah rolls that around bitterly, trying to think.

“Got all that from listening to the grunts, did you?”

“I pay attention, and the information is out there.”

“Anything else that they’re saying?”

Grace misses, or ignores, the rhetorical sarcasm in Sarah’s question.

“That the Legion project’s new, and feels useful. Most people are desperate. They think everything else is destined to fail. Or that all that waits for us is more exclusion zones and food riots.”

Clear as day, in her mind, what she’d said to Kyle: _there’s no fate but what we make—_

Sarah hangs her head. She can hear Grace stepping forward, cautiously.

“You don’t have to trust me, but… Dani seems to like you for some reason. That’s good enough for me. Can you show me the same courtesy I’m trying to show you?”

When Sarah looks up again, Grace is holding out the food. It _does_ smell good. Her stomach rumbles. Traitor. And she’s got a growing need to take a piss.

This time, Sarah snatches the bag from Grace’s hand. Cracking a chestnut between her teeth, she considers the woman in front of her.

“You’re right – I don’t trust you. You any good with code? Software babble?”

“No.”

So much for that angle. 

“I’m sure you’ll be useful at some point anyways,” Sarah snipes, and she’s gratified when Grace bristles slightly. Good. Things were getting uncomfortably sentimental, and this at least puts them on a footing they’re both used to. Like earlier today, during the bout between Grace and Dani. Which reminds her…

“Nothing else you feel like telling me?”

A guarded look crosses Grace’s face. “No. Why?”

Sarah shrugs. “There are some situations where you’ll have no way to hide. Might be better to come clean.”

“I am. I have.”

“Then I’m sure things are going to work out _just_ fine. When I need your help, I’ll ask.” Now she’s done. Sarah turns, and starts walking, munching on the fried chestnuts as she goes.

Grace hisses after her, sotto voce:

“That’s it?” 

“I was drinking earlier,” Sarah casts back at her regular volume. “Guess what needs I might have right now.”

Weirdly, once she’s situated back in her room, Sarah passes out almost immediately.

* * *

Dani woke knowing this was the last normal weekday she would have in a while, and the knowledge put her on edge even before the meeting reminder popped up in the air above her handheld. Sarah was supposed to accompany her, but the older woman is nowhere in sight. Armed with nothing more than coffee and the briefing files provided, Dani’s made the trip here on her own, and now stands in front of a non-descript door to a meeting room.

She steels herself a moment.

Kaiju Science… in the early days, they were tasked with studying the toxic Kaiju Blue phenomenon, after fluids and viscera floated into bays and estuaries along the coasts. From there the mandate expanded to studying Kaiju biochemistry and anatomy. Then K-Sci started to develop predictive modelling of attack frequency and exploring the nature of the Breach itself, which was where things were at when Dani first joined up…

Dani remembers the news footage, from the raids and the investigation. A makeshift Pons interface, assembled from garbage and misappropriated lab equipment. Kaiju entrails and organs carted out one by one, though their presence was sensationalized for the sake of drama. But the display cemented the scandal in the minds of the public, which had been the point.

After all, Carl and Gabriel had Drifted with a fragment of a Kaiju brain to learn what they had.

She hadn’t kept up with the proceedings after learning that, except to give her testimony when required. The rest of her time had been spent tending to an unresponsive Diego.

Whatever this briefing holds, ready or not, she needs to hear what they have to say for themselves.

With that, Dani reaches out and pushes open the door.

Entering the meeting room, Dani sees three people – Gabriel Ladino, his feet crossed up on the table in front of him as he manipulates a holograph in front of him; and Carl, with his arms held behind his straightened back, looking for all the world like he might have been standing in wait for hours.

“Dani Ramos. It has been quite some time,” Carl declares.

A baritone like his carries through the room, and Gabriel looks up to acknowledge her presence, quickly moving his feet to the floor. He smiles, winning as always. Dani can’t quite bring herself to give the same expression in return. There’s also a petty officer in attendance – her badge says _Freeman_ – seated behind Carl; she nods at Dani, which immediately puts her more at ease. Sarah or no, Dani isn’t alone for this conversation – they’re being supervised.

“I suppose it has,” she replies, drawing back a chair to sit in.

Gabriel speaks next, closing out the holograms with a gesture. “We hope that you’ll forgive our present accommodations. We didn’t want to disturb the engineers while they worked.”

Dani can’t resist – a bit of an edge creeps into her voice as she laces her fingers in front of her on the table. “And they felt that neutral territory might make this conversation less uncomfortable?”

Gabriel’s conciliatory smile thins out, almost imperceptibly. But Carl fills in immediately.

“No – I believe we all recognized some discomfort was inevitable. That being said…” He steps forward towards the table, sitting and meeting Dani’s eyes frankly. “Before we share our current findings, I must tell you that while I was on probation, I had the opportunity to reflect on the causes of John Connor’s demise and Diego’s disability. While it is true that we have made incredible contributions towards humanity’s protection, we made rash decisions with inadequate evidence five years ago. I regret the reckless applications to which we put the knowledge we had gained. It is necessary for me to tell you that I am sorry. If you are unable to forgive me, I will understand.”

“…That’s very different from what you said at the time,” Dani allows.

“Five years is a long time to be separated from our lives’ work,” Gabriel adds. “Time enough to gain some perspective.”

“I have been told I grew a conscience,” says Carl.

She doesn’t know what to say to that. Luckily, he continues to talk.

“We still do not have conclusive evidence to explain the power surge, nor the Drift interference which occurred between Phoenix Echo and Cyclone Valkyrie to knock you out of alignment. However, the best available theory suggests both events were linked to the data samples we uploaded in our patch. We were attempting to load aggregate data from all previous Kaiju battles into the Jaeger interface; Gabriel’s theory at the time was that since Kaiju are all functionally clones of one another, and share a single consciousness –”

“–There might have been similarities in _how_ they fought,” Gabriel finishes. “A way to explain how each Kaiju came more prepared each time. I hoped we might be able to replicate the method, turn it back against them. My patch should have served as a data source – machine learning, applied directly to the tactical suggestions provided to pilots via the Jaeger’s AI.”

Unperturbed, Carl speaks again before Dani can formulate a question or get a word in edgewise. 

“Precisely. But we failed to set appropriate limits as to how the code would execute during battle. We could not replicate the conditions under which the power surge took place – perhaps an error forced the Jaeger AI to register multiple Kaiju on the field, instead of just one, or misread the other Jaeger as a Kaiju due to the Drift technology embedded in each. Alternatively–”

“All of this is in the briefing documents I was sent!” Impatient, Dani slaps a hand down onto the table. “Is this all that we are here for today? A review of what happened to me and my brother? If so, I don’t understand why I had to come speak to you in person, and I would have liked some warning.” 

“We mean no disrespect,” Gabriel soothes, and Dani despises him in this moment. The petty officer closes her mouth again, also looking annoyed. Out of the two men, Gabriel is more relatable – and she can tell when someone is trying to placate her. “But the Legion project is a natural extension of our work from 2020 – perfected, of course, and rigorously checked for safety.”

“A reminder, gentleman—” Freeman interjects. “You were off to a good start with the apology, but the rest hasn’t gone according to the guidelines you were provided. Our meeting is meant to be a conversation, not a lecture. Give Ms. Ramos more time to speak.”

Gabriel settles back, smiling ruefully. “Apologies. We thought a backgrounder was the most important place to begin.”

Dani shrugs her irritation off, feeling her mouth twist slightly. “Well, what is this _Legion,_ then? Diego works with Engineering – his friends were talking about applying a couple of days ago.”

“May I?” Carl asks, meeting her gaze directly. He waits for Dani to nod, which… she supposes is a step in a right direction. “Put simply, it means a selective hive mind functionality will become integrated with Jaeger systems.”

“Put even more simply,” Gabriel says, “the Drift will be able to occur between more pilots than are in a single Jaeger. Between or across Jaegers for enhanced communication and coordination in battle; maybe even to a team onshore, where in the event of pilot death or compromise, a back-up can synch up and prevent neural overload for the remaining pilot.”

A pang goes through Dani, somewhere between a full-body chill and a flush. “That would have changed…”

“Everything,” Gabriel finishes, leaning in emphatically and tapping a finger between them. “And allowed the battle to be fought, and won, without Chimera escaping into Los Angeles.”

He stares at her meaningfully, and Dani feels another wave – this time, of guilty nausea. If she and Diego had a backup, maybe they could have saved all those lives…

“If I could go back, and make such a thing possible, I would,” Carl says quietly.

“But you can’t.”

All eyes turn towards the door, which has opened without any of them noticing.

Dark circles under her eyes, Sarah Connor stands there popping some sort of pill into her mouth and washing it down with a swig of coffee.

“None of you can,” she says, and her eyes flick between Gabriel and Carl with unconcealed disgust. She makes no move to enter the room further, nor to sit down. Dani hears Freeman sigh, glances over to see the woman massage between her eyes for an instant. “In a few weeks none of this will be relevant anyways.”

“Better to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.” Gabriel spreads his hands, magnanimous. “Besides – all the remaining Jaegers have been authorized to receive the technology after Judgment Day, regardless of the outcome of the mission. Drift tech isn’t going away, even if the Kaiju do. Why not learn from them while we can?”

“Because nothing like this ever goes the way you people hope it will. For all your promises about _safety_ , someone dies when you get something wrong.”

“What you say is true,” Carl says solemnly.

“With all due respect,” Gabriel drawls, clearly intending none, “people died implementing the first imperfect Jaeger systems. I believe your late husband was among them. The sacrifices that these brave men and women have made in order to bring us to the present day shouldn’t deter us from trying to win the war, nor from improving the lives of billions in its aftermath.”

Sarah enunciates very clearly. “Don’t you _dare_ bring Kyle into this, you son of a—”

“ _Connor_.” Freeman scowls over at her. “This meeting is being recorded.”

“Sound only, or video?”

Pausing, Freeman slowly replies: “…sound.”

“Great.” With great relish, Sarah extends a middle finger towards Gabriel. “That’s what I think of your project.”

The petty officer closes her notepad with a loud clap. “We’re done here. Gentlemen, is there _anything_ else?”

Carl and Gabriel exchange a look, and Gabriel counts off on his fingers. “We’ve got the findings, the mandate, the possibilities – no, that seems all for now. We’re looking forward to working with you.”

Carl looks back at Sarah for a moment, seeming to weigh whether he wants to say something further, but follows Gabriel out the door. Freeman adjusts a few settings on her handheld and heaves a sigh.

“You can’t get away from working with them, you know.”

“Yeah, well.” Sarah moves her neck from one side to the other, eyes closed. “Doesn’t mean I have to pretend to like them.”

Dani doesn’t feel like responding. She’s too busy thinking about the last, disorienting moments spent in the Drift with Diego. The weight of him and his confusion, and how silently he’d slipped away before she fully realized what had happened. Dani had never felt more desolate or alone than in that moment, either before or since. She’s spent years trying to learn, then believe, that there was nothing she could have done. Even so, the blame and guilt are as close to her as her shadow.

The Jaegers have always represented to her the best parts of humanity: the capacity to unite in common purpose; the manifestation of deep, abiding intimacy; the value of many forms of connection. From what she’s heard here, even with her own misgivings, Legion could serve as an extension of those values and bring everyone together. Could that be so wrong?

Sarah is angry, and understandably so – but that might not make her _right._

“Are you coming?”

“Mm? Oh – yes, of course.”

Today’s reminded her people are still moving forward despite fear and uncertainty, and that there might be a life beyond what’s about to happen to her.

And, watching Sarah exit in front of her with her tense shoulders… Dani wonders if Sarah's forgotten to keep up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo boy, this chapter took a _long time_ to write! Thanks for sticking around for some of these reveals - and next up, Dani goes to that party Diego has planned. She's got a lot on her mind, and could use a bit of a break before, y'know, the Drift Testing upcoming.  
> Thank you so much to dire_quail and Tyellas for talking through parts of this chapter with me; your insights mean the world and help make the finer details (like the functional spec document) so much richer! Thanks also to starfoozle for the encouragement. In my estimation, I feel like we're approaching the halfway point of this fic - thank you so much for your readership, and I hope you're having a good summer. Stay safe.


	7. End of World Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: this chapter has a character experience abrupt sensory overload at one point, and features a party with alcohol.

For the third time tonight, Dani wipes off her lipstick and tries again.

Historically, parties haven’t been an issue for her – but this one feels like cheating to attend. Diego insists, of course, and Dani is resolute: she _will_ go, for one last night of attempted normalcy. All that looms before her feels like stepping up towards a precipice, like wading into the ocean up to her Jaeger’s hips and looking out towards the hazy flat horizon. Diego wants her there, and that’s enough reason.

But she keeps smudging her makeup, fudging the lines, and this broken train of thought has unbalanced the creamy sweep of lipstick along her bottom lip. Dani caps the tube, not quite flinging it away from her in frustration. Gloss it is.

Resolute, she does not look at her comm, doesn’t keep it on her, doesn’t regard it in any way until she’s already on her way there, in fact, because the thought of reading a polite rejection to her invitation from Grace isn’t doing anything to squash her nerves about the whole affair.

It buzzes in the pocket of her jeans – imagine, wearing jeans on the base! – and Dani startles. But she picks it up and Grace has typed two letters and a smiley face – “Ok.”

Something in her leaps.

_Now I have a reason to_

Delete.

_Can’t wait! I’m really excited to_

Deletes that too.

_See you there._

Send.

That was a good response. Appropriate. Proportional.

Her destination is soundproofed enough that, until the door is creaked open, she hears nothing of the party at all. It’s not a rager, the way she might have anticipated – but a lively hum of chatter runs through, someone’s raucous laughter, muffled noises from the back area. That said, shop lamps are hung up by their hooks around the room, and their bulbs have been replaced here and there with blacklights instead of the usual orange-gold glow – so there’s potential. The night is early. Dani grabs a beer from the ice-packed coolers near the door, twisting the metal cap off deftly before taking another scan about her. The chairs and sofas of the common area have been pushed around and rearranged to make way for an impromptu dance floor, and Dani can see what appears to be a set of empty wooden pallets stacked together in a roughshod stage. Diego is perched there, sitting atop a stool, strumming experimentally and picking at the strings of his guitar. Snaking cables coil near his feet; his amps aren’t plugged in yet, the better to allow for tuning. Someone, somewhere, has found a microphone and is setting it up close by.

He looks up towards the door as she’s ushered inside, and grins; hops down off the stage to make his way over to her.

“You made it!” His arm flings around her shoulder and squeezes.

“You told me 10 p.m., so I am here,” she responds with a quirk of her mouth.

“I’m just about done getting ready for the set—”

“Are you doing-?”

“ _Responde_? Yes.”

“Good,” Dani replies, looking back over her shoulder. “They’ll love it.”

“Distracted?” She looks back to him to see the smile has softened on his face, his attention flicking around the room.

“I don’t see anyone I know yet,” Dani says, covering herself. His arm tightens, comforting for a moment, and releases while Diego draws back a step or two.

“You can choose your seat,” he gestures expansively, “any seat will be the best in the house!”

“It is standing room only at this point!” She calls towards him in Spanish, and he thumbs his nose.

“I know!”

A metallic rill runs through the space, and the talk quiets as Diego leans into the microphone, pick still held away from the guitar strings he’d just strummed. “How is everyone tonight?”

After the scattered cheers, an introduction, Diego leans into the first song. He croons; the crowd moves in; he demonstrates an impressive run of chords and launches into his more upbeat compositions; someone starts dancing, and soon there’s a gentle, pressing crowd bouncing and swaying on the floor. Dani’s situated herself on one of the worn, soft chairs nearby – closer to the corner than not, squishy from use beneath her tucked-up knees. Her arms drape over the back of the chair, and she leans hard against it. She nods along to the songs, gets misty-eyed thinking of their teenaged years. Of Diego, making up songs about their mother, playing til his fingers needed band aids. Of the Kaiju, and the work; his lost dream of being a musician for a living, but holding onto music as a reprieve…

Dani goes for another beer. The set wears on. The crowd has brought out lighters, now, or their handhelds if they don’t have one – the audience is a sea of wavering flames and bright screens moving in slow arcs. From her corner spot Dani waves her own phone. It’s doubtful that Diego can even see it, but nonetheless… the effectiveness of her contribution to the atmosphere is also lessened, as she keeps turning the screen towards herself rather than outward. To check the time. To check for messages, although at no point has it hummed in her grasp with a notification. She is dislocated, carried by the songs, watching the hour shift closer to 11.

Diego gets to the last song, leaning into the microphone with his eyes closed.

“This one is for us,” he says. “For the effort we make, for our companionship, for our camaraderie. It’s been a hard road, a long road, and we cannot yet see the true end of what we have done. But we have each other, and we have now.” Diego looks out over the crowd. “We have hope. I dedicate this last song to you, my friends and colleagues.”

Dani can hear the intake of his breath, the opening notes; he starts a stripped-down version of _Te Lo Pido por Favor,_ a cover, but one that she wants to lean into.

There’s a moment when Dani realizes someone has approached, is in her space beyond a desire to be closer to the music.

Grace stands, just to the side, a beer bottle in each hand. She passes one over to Dani with a flickering glance, a nearly shy upward quirk to the corner of her mouth. The blue of her eyes almost seems to glow in the blacklight. It’s as though the room shudders into closer focus; a little ember lights up behind Dani’s breastbone. Suddenly she feels anticipation, eagerness, the night splitting open like a melon in front of her.

“You came.”

“I said I would,” Grace says, leaning in so Dani will be able to hear her better and passing a bottle over. Dani takes it gratefully, brushing her fingers over the tips of Grace’s as she does so.

“You did – though you missed most of Diego’s performance!” She means it teasingly, but Grace almost seems to wince for a moment.

“I’m sorry – something came up. I didn’t miss as much as you’d think – but it was harder to enter once the show started. More people filtering in.”

Dani half-twists around so that she’s more facing Grace than the stage. She looks good – her usual casual clothing dressed up slightly with darker wash pants and a soft grey-wash tee. Dani shifts her legs, crossing them instead, holding the beer loosely in her hands in the space created between her thighs.

“I’m glad.”

The last notes of the song hover on the air along with Diego’s voice – then these fade out, buried under thunderous applause and whooping. A few people wolf-whistle, and Dani can hear Diego’s laugh over the speakers.

“Thank you all! But enough of me, huh? You all know Nico from Engineering – he’s gonna kick the party up a notch, what is it, spin some records? Let’s go!”

There’s a brief pop and crackle as an aux cord gets plugged in somewhere, and a lightly drawling voice, barely audible, is picked up by the still-live mic – “no records, but I’ve got my Spotify mixes” – and the volume gets cranked up gradually on some electronica dance track.

The cheering intensifies, and even more blacklights get switched on – along with some small, spinning floor light that casts lasers through the air in a multi-coloured spray. Around them, even more chairs and sofas are getting scraped to the side – Grace seems to notice this, and holds out a lightly calloused palm for Dani to take.

She swallows hard, the last bit of her lager thankfully going down smooth, and lets herself be hauled up. Grace gently turns Dani out of the way, two other people grabbing the chair she’d been sitting on and carrying it further.

“Just in time,” Grace comments, looking faintly bemused as the hopping crowd expand to fill even more of the open space.

Dani’s focused on Grace’s arm, lightly caged around her, the proximity of the taller woman, how good she smells: something vaguely smoky, a hint of salt.

“Would you want to join them?” Dani asks, impulsive, half-expecting a no.

The song’s talking about having love and music, Dani certain of one but still clamping down, unwilling to think about the other, when Grace takes her hand again.

“Sure,” Grace says, sounding somehow fragile and casual at the same time, and pulls Dani through the crowd. Dani’s not sure where they’re heading until she sees Diego, button-down shirt actively being pulled off, his buddies mussing up his hair.

“Hey!” he laughs delightedly as she shows up, the song layering vocals and instrumentals – _we don’t fear you_ – and Dani gets a hug that lifts her feet slightly off the ground.

“You were incredible!”

“You dancing?” Grace asks, and the consensus is a blur of nods; Dani loses herself for a bit in twirling, in swaying and swivelling her hips, in everyone putting arms along each other’s shoulders and jumping along to the beat of a particularly hard-hitting song.

She notices Grace, smiling, stepping along in time and lifting her arms up; minutes pass, song after song blurring by. In no time there’s a gentle shimmer of sweat across Dani’s brow and down her neck, and the boys are slapping each other’s backs and tumbling towards the drinks. Just as rapidly, others have filled the gaps they’ve left behind. Scooching a little closer to Grace for comfort is a natural response. Then Nico’s voice crackles through the speakers, hamming up the breathiness:

“This one’s for all the lonely hearts out there – okay, no, I’m kidding, I’m letting the playlist go for a second – be back, take a breather.”

The tempo slows; this track isn’t one Dani recognizes, but Grace snorts.

“God. I haven’t heard this song since I was a kid.”

“When?”

“Early 2000’s or so. That’s when the song was made, I mean,” she adds quickly.

Around them, some are actually pairing up; a few more people are filtering to the sides of the room, or are continuing to jostle against each other in giggling circles.

Emboldened – perhaps by three drinks, which have her feeling loose and lightly tingly through her head – Dani stretches a hand forth dramatically. She even deepens her voice a little for her preposition. “Shall we?”

Although an eyebrow quirks for a moment, Grace takes the hand – and reels Dani in with a single motion, a rapid demonstration of her gentle strength. Dani can’t help it – she laughs and is rewarded by Grace’s answering smile.

Grace doesn’t exactly live up to her name – there’s no grand sweeping motions, no cinematic waltzing, but when a slightly tipsy Dani guides Grace’s hand to her waist it rests there without discomfort or hesitation, so that’s something. And there’s rhythm to their steps, to the gentle step-sway from side-to-side.

“You’re good,” Dani comments partway through the next song, also a slower one; Nico hasn’t returned yet to resume DJ duties. 

“Not really – I’d call it competent. But thanks.”

“I’m not exactly the smoothest – this isn’t my style of song. But it’s worth it – I’ve missed dancing, period! And parties,” Dani continues, gently pushing Grace’s hand upwards so that she can twirl herself beneath it. “There’s been too much to do… have you gone to many?”

Grace just shakes her head, and Dani feels a little like she’s unknowingly tread into delicate territory.

“Mostly drinking,” Grace concedes after a beat. “But there were a few where we’d listen to old CDs – salvage.”

Oh, God – Dani had forgotten about the exclusion zone, about Grace’s past. “I didn’t mean to—” she starts to apologize, but Grace shakes her head and pulls Dani in a little closer. Her breath hitches – Grace’s hand is warm on the small of her back, and the other woman is looking over Dani’s shoulder into the middle distance.

“Don’t worry about it – there were enough good times with the other trainees. Just… not much time or opportunity for music.” They turn, together, steps matching the beat of the song. “I love that about here, now. People keep taking the time to feel human. Even in the midst of all of this.”

“What makes you feel most human?”

Dani’s never prepared for the intensity of Grace’s regard – how closely she seems to look into her, through her, and the deep pain that Dani imagines she can behind everything Grace says or does.

“Good food. People, going about their day. When I’m fighting… sparring. And moments like this.”

The song ends.

“ _Alriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight_ ,” they hear Nico say, too close to the mic – a piercing, crescendo-ing hum of feedback rips through the room, and while Dani only winces she sees Grace flinch back and cover her ears. “Shit, sorry, sorry – but never fear, my apocalyptic darlings, your DJ for the night is _back_ and ready for more _action--_!”

The next song is something loud, electric guitars ripping into the air; a handful of Americans holler in excitement, a woman shrieks in delight. The laser projector switches to a flickering strobe, flashing white-black after-images of swarming dancers onto Dani’s vision.

Grace is still curled in on herself minutely, and Dani reaches out towards her. “Are you okay?”

But she’s waved off – Dani could swear she sees Grace’s eyes watering. “Fine, fine – _shit_. I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can stay.”

“You’d think he’d know better mic etiquette,” Dani starts, but Grace’s teeth have pulled back as a circle of stomping, clapping people forms in the middle of the dance floor. Slightly shrill, gravelly vocalists begin a rock anthem…

“I’m gonna go,” Grace apologizes, waving vaguely. “This was nice.”

Dani loses her, her shout of Grace’s name lost, and the last thing she sees is Grace stumbling towards where the door would be. She tries to follow, but the crush of people towards what must be a popular rallying song prevent her. By the time Dani reaches the hallway, Grace is nowhere in sight.

Diego finds her, then, and Dani shakes off the slightly oily feeling that’s slipped over her – it was so abrupt, such an unpleasant departure. Dani types out a quick message – _you okay?_ – on her handheld; but then Diego’s friends are tugging her back inside, and she’s half-heartedly flinging herself into the motions. Her earlier thoughts that this wouldn’t be a rager need to be amended, but she doesn’t have any more to drink; something tells her that she’d end up regretting it, the sparkle of her evening dulled by worry. She imagines going after Grace, checking in on her at her room. But no, that’s too far, that’s overstepping…

Midnight slips towards 1 in the morning, then 2 – no response from Grace, Dani checks compulsively – and Nico’s replaced by Tonya from the K-Science lab, then Meihua from Comms, and by the time 3 a.m. has come and gone Dani is ready to call it a night. She accepts some sweaty, smelly hugs from Diego and company before she departs. Dani throws herself into the shower, letting the hot water rush over her. She drinks two glasses of water, aware that she’ll probably wake up partway through the night having to pee.

One last time, she checks for messages – and Grace has replied.

_Sorry – got overwhelmed. It happened really quickly – but I’m glad you invited me. I had a really good time. Hope you did too. I’ll see you Monday._

Dani stares at it, the insinuation of a headache nudging in along her temples. But nonetheless, there’s a final fluttering of warmth in her chest – stupid, _stupid_ – but one that she curls in around, tucking a pillow against herself, and crashes, utterly spent, passing in and out of sleep restlessly until at last the dark takes her under.

\--

She sleeps most of Sunday, and wakes up with her guts twisted around. Nothing is helping. Grace sent a follow up – _feeling better; heading downtown. Text me if you want to join – I’ll get it if you don’t though, so no pressure._

Dani thinks of going into the city but in the end doesn’t have the courage, Diego doesn’t answer her texts until late evening, and by then it’s almost time.

He takes her out to the garages one more time. He tosses her an apple pear, wrapped in a net of soft foam threads, and rubs at the dark circles under his eyes. Even after the late night, Diego still seems fresher, more energized than she can remember him being in ages. She’s glad – performing did him some good.

“Tomorrow’s the big day, hey?”

“I suppose.”

“Not so excited?”

“There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to do this. I don’t… I don’t _know_ anyone who I’m going up against. I’ve read their profiles, over and over again, but none of them feel real. I’m not sure I could pick any of the Ranger candidates out of the crowd if my life depended on it!”

The look on his face falters, turns inward. “I wish it were me joining you. I wish they didn’t think what’s up here” – he taps his head – “made me ineligible. If there was a way for me to help…”

“You’re doing plenty,” she reassures him, squeezing his hand. “Believe me.”

“Mm. I might go talk to someone all the same. I’m useless for the Legion project, I’m tired of focusing on repair-work…”

“You wish you were going to pilot with me.”

The way he looks like a kicked puppy tells her she’s right.

“I keep telling myself that it doesn’t matter, that I’m not bothered.”

“I tell myself the same.”

He lets out a long, exaggerated groan and slowly lowers himself back on the metal grating they sit on, staring straight up. “I thought we were going to be big heroes, together. That we’d get to prove ourselves, that I’d be fighting off the girls–”

“Machismo!”

“–and that we’d save the world. The Phoenix, that first time, she felt like our salvation and deliverance when everything was burning down around us. I wanted to be that for other people.”

Dani follows the upwards punch of his fist towards the flat bright grey-white of the sky, swept over with clouds and blocking all the blue.

“I wasn’t thinking about saving anyone, or anything,” Dani confesses. “I was just glad that if we were both going, I’d be there with someone who cared. I was so scared of losing another person I loved, someone else from our family. It felt like the Phoenix heard that. Maybe that’s why she woke up for us.”

Diego gets a contemplative look on his face, the kind that she’s seen when he’s thinking over a song. Only, instead of lyrics, he says: “We keep talking around the problem, which is who your new Drift partner is going to be. But there’s a lot of kinds of love, and maybe all you need is to synch with someone who loves the world as much as you do, even if otherwise they’re a stranger. You’ve always been my big sister, looking out for me even when I was being a dumbass – I’ve been grateful for that my whole life. That’s not changing just because you’ve got other people you connect to, y’know? I want you to be happy.” He looks at her carefully, smiling his usual disarming smile that Dani just knows means trouble. “Aside from that, you should tell her.”

“I – Don’t make me shove you off this port!”

“The hell kind of a statement’s it gonna make if I can’t even show up at your wedding to wipe big sloppy tears off my face – _hey!_ ”

But she didn’t really mean it, and after the force of her shove he comes right back towards her like a pendulum, and they pinch and mock-slap til she catches him in a headlock. Then they laugh, she releases him, and they look out over the pewter ocean, the colour of the choppy waves incongruent with the contentment she feels.

“When this is all over,” she says at last, “you should become a musician. People deserve to hear what you can do.”

“They just did,” he smiles. “Even if it ends tomorrow, I played for people I care about – fuck it, eh? Let the Kaiju do their worst.”

“Don’t say that,” Dani protests. “Not even as a joke.”

“Alright.”

He promises that he’ll be there. She eats the apple pear using her pocket knife, cutting off one semi-translucent slice at a time, cool and crisp and floral.

That night, she doesn’t sleep much.

\---

The testing goes poorly.

Diego is there, along with Major Dean, Sarah, Grace, a team from LOCCENT observing her. The candidates have all been whittled down from a much larger pool and Dani is meant to rank them. But in her estimation, there’s always something… out of synch, badly aligned.

The first, Andy, is a sturdy woman with swept-aside hair, all-black clothing, forearm bracers. She has a glint in her eyes, an economic viciousness to her moves. But she’s too willing to pursue the damage, make it a monologue instead of a conversation, and all Dani can think about as they spar is the note in Andy’s file that talks about a wife who drowned in coastal flooding after a Kaiju landing. It doesn’t feel like she’s fully overcome that, and Dani wins the round when she cuts her sparring staff up along Andy’s right shoulder, just up next to the neck. Andy just nods at her, steely-eyed, impressed, looking ancient and tired beyond her years.

Ramona, the second, is better at the give-and-take – but still, there’s something about her that stutters in her movements when Dani comes close, avoidant. That’s the entire problem: Ramona is too willing to back off, too eager to retreat when she could counter, or to thrust forward with an attack that Dani can easily parry or block. Try as she might otherwise, Dani has to dial back her moves more than she wanted.

Ezra does well, but he’s inconsistent. He sets up a stance that would be an easy read for her, and then keeps trying to switch the move partway through into something else, so the follow-through is muddled and the form bad. It’s clever as a tactic the first time and gets him a point, but after that it gets sloppy and all Dani can think about is the lagged response time of a Jaeger – how every attack is delayed because of warmup and cooldown time. And so on…

It's all she can take not to look at Diego, who she knows will be reacting with his whole body and face; his imagined wince lives large as a billboard in her mind. The best Dani can do is press forward grimly, determined to make something of this work. It _has_ to.

Then at last she catches the eye of her sparring partner – her _trainer_ , Dani corrects herself – standing at the back of the room, blue eyes inscrutable beneath the concealing sweep of her hair. Grace has her arms folded tight across her chest, ignoring her marking sheets entirely; stands just behind a few others so that she’s mostly hidden from view, glowering. For a moment Dani’s pride twinges, but she pushes that initial reaction down – the look doesn’t say disapproval. Unlike Dean, unlike the researcher from Loccent, Grace isn’t writing a single observation, not making a single tally. She’s just watching, as Dani knocks away another blow without really even paying attention. It’s not her performance that’s the problem. It’s…

“Enough.”

At Dani’s declaration, the contender stumbles. He glances up at her quickly, reads her expression, and straightens – bows.

Then he smartly returns to the side of the room.

“Well?” Sarah approaches, a slouch to her spine and hands shoved into her pockets. She’s got a toothpick gnawed to splinters in one corner of her mouth.

“Did you do this on purpose?”

“Who’s your pilot?” Sarah continues, as though Dani hadn’t said anything at all. Her grey eyes direct, searching.

Dani wipes the sweat off her brow, heart thundering inside her, full of a bright-body _knowledge._

“It’s her.”

“Ramona?”

“ _No_! Not – it’s _Grace_.”

Dani can feel Sarah searching her face, before she claps once – sharp.

“Listen up!” At her bark, the laughter and chatter in the room die out. “Everyone out except the selection team. Now!”

Dani mouths an apology to her brother as he makes his way out; the onlooking crowd trickles out like sand from an hourglass, slowly, surprise clear in their tone. In the meantime, Grace too unfolds herself and begins moving. Dani has to ignore her – Sarah’s pinning her through with her stare, waiting for an explanation. She takes a few deep breaths, to steady and slow the heaving in her chest.

“She’s my drift partner. Grace,” Dani repeats, near delirious the longer that Sarah just _stands_ there. “We’re compatible.”

“I know.”

Huh? The lack of inflection, the absence of reaction from Sarah, startles Dani more than the words.

“You… know?”

“From the second I saw the two of you fighting – ” Sarah pauses, and Dani can see a suggestion through her cheek that Sarah’s tonguing at her back molars for a second – “and once I confirmed you’d snuck out together. Gutsy.”

The longer that Sarah’s been talking, the more that bewilderment has settled down into irritation. “Then what the fuck was all this about?” Dani says low in Spanish, feeling her teeth grind, wiping sweat from her brow, “why waste everyone’s time? Why waste _mine_?”

Irreverent, Sarah’s begun to pick at her teeth.

“Because.” Her gaze into Dani’s eyes is direct, for just a second, before flicking over her shoulder at something Dani can’t see. “I’m not the one you have to convince.”

When Dani pivots to face the back of the now-emptied room, she sees Grace standing solidly by the door: jaw set, eyes dull where they’re set in her haunted expression. Watching. Listening.

Waiting.

With a deep breath, Dani moves towards Grace.

\--

For some reason, Dani’s thinking about the beach. The ocean had always been a force of nature, a threatening presence that could never be truly known, only respected.

Dani remembers being terrified of the depths, the unknowable fathoms, the blind and crawling creatures adapted for crushing pressure and punishing temperatures. She remembers bawling at a video someone took of a giant squid that her older cousins showed her one day to frighten her; pale and extended, the long tentacles dangling impossibly. She’d thought it lived in the library computer. For weeks she’d had nightmares imagining every possible thing – salt water coming alive and swallowing Mexico in a single bite; a riptide tangling up her brother to take him away from her; machines exploding in a spray of sparks and glass with pale grub-like tendrils snaking out to encircle her.

The ocean became the proxy for those fears. On daytrips she would freeze in their family car, smelling the old polyester of the seat and hot rubber, and refuse to get out of it, even on days where the sun boiled in the sky and the water promised relief. Dani very nearly ruined several outings that way.

Dani’s mother crouched next to the vehicle, warm eyes looking up at Dani.

 _We are here to learn respect, Daniela,_ her mama would say. _Gifts and trials go hand-in-hand. ‘Let water run if we don’t have to drink it’ – it has its place. In the meantime, it’s a beautiful day. Look – see how pretty it is? How it glitters, all silver and turquoise? Come play with your brother; your Papi wants to carry you on his shoulders. We’ll keep you safe._

So many years of delight and cautious exploration followed that Dani mostly forgot those nightmares, the panic. Then the Kaiju emerged, and until they identified the Breach as the source, Dani thought her terror had been manifested, the worst happening at last.

Approaching Grace, Dani thinks about wanting to stand on the sand, to look towards the horizon, to let fear fall away until all that’s left is…

\--

In her wake, she hears Major Dean say something in his raspy voice – Sarah begin to reply in a murmur.

At last, Dani is there. It’s amazing, how Grace can be so open with her body language yet so guarded at the same time. She’s lounging against the wall; Dani decides to join her.

“I know what you’re going to say.”

Dani swallows. “Then you also know that I’m right.”

“They’ll never go for it.”

Tipping her head towards Dean and Sarah, Dani shrugs. “I think those two are willing to take the gamble.”

“That’s not the problem.”

“Tell me what _is_ ,” Dani insists, aware that she’s almost pleading, still feeling the rush of her blood as bright and quick as it’s ever been. She wants to lean into Grace, and she won’t, because to do so would be a form of unforgivable pressure.

“...Can you keep a secret?” Grace murmurs.

“Of course.” _Except in the Drift._

Grace folds her arms, thinks again about doing so, and her tall frame shrinks in on itself slightly – Dani feels like the tension Grace holds in her body so often should be taken as a sign of vulnerability, not hostility. One of Grace’s cheeks puckers for a moment, like she’s chewing on the inside of it.

“I was on my own for a long time,” she offers at last, “and the West Coast wasn’t a good place to grow up. But someone found me, took care of me. Taught me how to protect myself and other people. She was good to me – I’ve talked about her before. I feel like there’s still time to fix things, _before_ they get broken worse than we can deal with.”

“Go on,” Dani encourages softly.

“All I wanted was to be a pilot – it seemed like the quickest way to _do_ something. But I was reckless. I wanted to impress her, prove I was ready. And I found someone who had a homemade Pons interface…”

“And you Drifted.” Dani whispers. She shudders involuntarily. The neural handshake requires close supervision or a damn good assembly in the interface, and it’s not the illegality that worries her – it’s whether all the protocols were in place to keep Grace safe.

“It didn’t end well,” Grace manages at last, knuckles tapping nervously against the cinderblock of the wall. “When I got to Seattle I’d convinced myself I’d be fine, that I would be able to avoid chasing the RABIT. The closer I got to having my clearance checked on… I panicked.”

“I won’t tell anyone.” Reaching to the side, Dani finds Grace’s hand, the clenched fist of it. Her fingers slacken, just a little, at Dani’s touch. “It can be intense. Sharing the inside of your mind with someone like that.”

Dani feels Grace’s hand open under hers, and she lets her own rest in Grace’s palm – not moving, just alighting there like a butterfly might.

“Did you know? Something similar happened to Diego and I. We Drifted without authorization, and that’s how we got noticed – the fight with Houndstooth. We didn’t live near any major population centres, so no opportunities to be formally recruited. Passed over like so many other places in the South Americas. I didn’t even know I was Drift Compatible until then. Because we helped, in such a public way, we were told we were naturals. They let us stay on. They had to.”

“I remember hearing about that.”

“The Phoenix was nothing then, too. She was a pile of weapons attached to a skunkworks Conn-Pod, and we were just meant to check that all the connections were solid. When the facility got attacked… I don’t know. I leapt up. I shoved a helmet on my head, reached for my brother, and together we re-directed the Kaiju up the coast. I dreamed about the sound of the plasma guns for months after that. The details are faded. But I think the story they’ve told us – that only the very special, the chosen, get to become heroes – I think that’s not true.”

There’s a raw note in Grace’s voice when she next speaks. “Thank you.”

“Will you try, with me?”

Grace withdraws her hand slightly, but it’s so that she can brush against the side of Dani’s wrist, just once. “Yes.”

Then she snorts. “I think they’re going to insist on it either way. But if we can limit the audience…”

“Are you finished?” Sarah calls to them.

Dani looks at Grace, who’s looking right back. They turn in unison towards the Major, and Sarah, both approaching.

“Set up the Drift test.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the music: The song that kicks off the dance party is [End of World Party by HÆLOS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YWv8fxfNmc) (glitch art and flashing images at source) - I've been unable to stop listening to it since 2019. It's a bop, and one with a pointed message in the lyrics. 
> 
> Please feel free to substitute in 1) your early 2000's pop song of choice for the slow dance and 2) your loud hard Rock anthem of choice for the song that Grace has a bad time with (oof)! Diego sings a song that Diego Boneta (his actor) is famous for, and I checked which song it is that he covers/sings in the movie when he and Dani are leaving their house together. That one also features here! 
> 
> It's been a while, so thank you all for your patience and continued (or new) readership! I hope this story keeps you good company; it was really nice to dip back into, and I am having a blast writing this; I just had a span of a couple months where I couldn't bring myself to write or finish anything. My creativity's come back, and I feel a lot better for having taken a break. So long, 2020.


End file.
